While I was working on my second quilt for Ollie’s birthday gift, I said to Ted that, given shipping costs, we could probably deliver the quilt in person for what it cost to make two quilts. I was kidding, but after a second or two, we looked at each other and said, “We should do that.” We texted Jeff and La right away to ask if it would work for them to have us visit for Ollie’s first birthday. They said, “Absolutely,” so we immediately bought plane tickets. (Much cheaper than shipping, right?)
The weather on the first day of our visit was perfect for a walk to check out the neighborhood. Ollie loves to go outside, so he was excited. Alex tried to make him look cool with a pair of sunglasses, but either Ollie’s not the cool type, or he just doesn’t like glasses, because he took them off immediately.
Provo is in the Utah Valley and is surrounded by mountains. From anywhere in the city, it looks like you can walk in any direction and run into a towering mountain. The mountain in this view from Jeff and La’s townhouse complex looks farther away than the one that stood behind the Airbnb where we stayed for our Christmas visit.
Our walk took us to the pool area. Safety is obviously important, as indicated by the warning beside the baby pool.
From there, we went to the clubhouse exercise room. Ollie was fascinated by the treadmill. Alex set it at the slowest speed–0.5 mph–and put Ollie on it. The little guy crawled like crazy to reach the other end, but every time he stopped crawling to reach for the frame, the belt took him back again. Then he tried walking. That worked better, but he still couldn’t get to his goal. He finally noticed that the side rails didn’t move, so he planted his right knee and hand on a rail. Unfortunately, his left hand and knee still kept going backward, forcing him to “half” crawl. Alex took pity on him and put him fully back on the treadmill. By the time we decided Ollie had enough exercise, he’d done a 20-minute workout.
After all that exercise, it was time to rest a bit. We went into the playroom where Alex and Ollie got comfortable on a toddler-size sofa.
Then it was time to eat. Just like his Grandma La, Ollie loves mashed potatoes. Not every bite made it into his mouth.
It only took a little while for Ollie to feel comfortable with Gigi and Grandpa Ted.
Of course, we played games. This time it was Mahjong, sheephead, Catch Phrase, and Skull King.
The big attraction was Jeff’s new VR headset and his new game, Beat Saber. Jeff and Kyra excelled at the game; the rest of us had a great time with lower scores. Jeff cast the game to the TV screen so we could all see what the player was doing. In the photo below, Kyra is leaning to the side to avoid being hit by the white rectangle coming at her. If it hits you, a message bluntly tells you that you failed. You don’t get loving support or encouragement from a video game.
I found Zack, Kyra, and Alex sitting together on the sofa and got a nice picture of them–except for the lights reflecting on Zack’s glasses.
All good things come to an end, and so did our visit. We can’t wait to see the family again, so until next time, lots of love to all of you.
Ted’s sister, Mutzie, (aka the Quilting Queen) gave Kari a small quilt when Kari was a toddler, and she also gave Kari a baby quilt for each of Kari’s three boys. Kari loves those quilts (she wore hers down to rags) and thought making a quilt for a baby gift would be a good idea for our next sewing project. Since Ollie’s birthday was coming up and since I’d be working with Kari on her quilt project, it seemed like a good idea for me to make a gift quilt for Ollie.
The last time I worked with a sewing partner was during the years my mom taught me how to sew. Now that Kari has decided it’s time for her to learn to sew, I have a sewing partner again and I’m really enjoying it. We start our mutual sewing projects by shopping for fabric and supplies together, a subset of sewing that’s also more fun to do with a partner. Kari chose fabrics in blues and yellows. She wanted to make a simple quilt for her first effort, so she planned to sew the edges together (wrong sides out) and turn the quilt through, then topstitch a “binding” edge and quilt it. She bought calico for the top fabric and fleece for the bottom because some of the quilts Mutzie made for the boys have a fleece backing and Kari loves the softness of it.
My choice of fabrics was calico in light and dark blues. Kaitlyn told me that Ollie looks good in blue and he loves his Mickey Mouse toy, so I decided to put some Mickey Mouse appliqués on his quilt. I planned to use a bias-cut binding around the edges. Kari’s quilt gift will stay in Missouri; mine is going to Utah. We chose a medium-weight batting for hers because more than that would be too much with the fleece backing; I went with a heavy-weight batting for Utah’s cold winters.
Things were looking good. We worked together on Kari’s quilt when she had time to come over for an afternoon and I worked on mine between our mother-daughter sessions. I’m not an artist, but I found a clipart Mickey Mouse-like outline online, zoomed the PC screen to my appliqué size, and traced a pattern.
I cut out the appliqués, fused them to the quilt top with HeatnBond, stitched around the edges, and admired my work. It looked good.
If this quilt ever becomes valuable (hah!), “Antiques Road Show” will raise its value with the provenance of a signature, so I decided to put my signature in a corner of the quilt. I estimated where the signature would fit without being covered by the binding and I stitched it. So far, so good.
Then I pinned the top fabric, the batting, and the bottom fabric together, basted them, and marked my quilting lines. I was pondering how to draw long straight lines when I remembered that we have a spare 7-foot piece of finished oak baseboard in the basement. I checked to make sure it wasn’t warped, then washed it off and used it as a long straightedge. It worked great for marking the quilting lines.
As I was marking the lines, I discovered a problem or, in Bob Ross terms, a happy accident. One of the lines went right through the signature. With my seam ripper in hand, I ripped out the signature and repositioned it. After that, it was exciting to start sewing quilting lines to make my project look more like a quilt than like two pieces of fabric with a filling. I laid the quilted quilt on the table, examined the lines for straightness, and saw some more happy accidents. There were so many crooked places in the lines that I wasn’t pleased at all. I got out my seam ripper (again) and sewed the lines (again), then checked how everything looked (again). There were still some areas that needed adjusting, so I ripped (again) and re-sewed (again). 😢 Bob R’s happy accident thing is wearing thin.
After the third round of stitching lines, the quilt looked ok–not great, but passable–so I moved on to the binding. I started pinning the binding near the signature and guess what . . . the binding covered the bottom edge of the signature. Dang it! How many happy accidents can one project have??? I ripped out the signature (again) and stitched it (again). Then I sewed the binding to the top of the quilt, mitered all the corners, folded it over and pinned it to the bottom, making sure I caught the bottom edge with my top pins. I was ready to “stitch in the ditch” to attach the back of the binding and finish the quilt.
But, . . . when I finished that job and turned the quilt over, almost half of my stitches in the ditches had failed to catch the edge of the binding, in spite of how carefully I’d pinned it. I’d been pretty patient about all the do-overs so far, but this was the last straw. I’d already clocked 43+ hours on this quilt because I’d ripped out so much of what I’d done and re-sewed it at least twice and sometimes three times. I’d had it! Good-bye, Bob Ross, and take your happy accidents with you!
I was tired of the way this quilt was behaving and I told Ted I sincerely believed it was cursed and the universe was giving me a message. I was not happy with how my (almost) finished quilt looked and I felt like I’d have to make excuses for all the things that were not up to my standards. I definitely didn’t want another seamstress to see it up close and I did not want to give work of this quality to Ollie. “Despondent” perfectly described my mindset at that moment. I think the heavy-weight batting was the problem. It was too thick for my sewing machine to do its best work and it definitely made the quilt heavy. Not warm and cozy heavy, but “take this thing off of me” heavy. I decided (with Ted’s full support) to start over, and this is what I did with the Mickey Mouse quilt.
I bought some lighter batting, chose a blue fabric with a puppy print (remember, Ollie looks good in blue), and a brown fabric for the backing. The print I chose won’t remind Ollie of his Mickey Mouse toy, but what little kid doesn’t like puppies? I decided to stay with my original basic idea–appliqués and a binding–but instead of messing with a bias binding, I chose to do a self-binding.
To complement the puppy-patterned fabric, I chose puppy paw prints for my appliqués. The Mickey Mouse appliqués were a single piece of fabric; the paw prints had five pattern pieces each. I printed copies of my pattern and cut the pattern pieces out of one of the sheets to create a template. It was so easy to place the template on the quilt fabric, fit the adhesive-bonded pieces into it, and iron them in place.
Never let it be said that I don’t learn from my mistakes. This time, I drew my quilting lines before sewing the signature in the corner. I knew exactly where to place it and it was in the right place the first time.
I put the three layers together, basted them, and sewed the quilting lines. Every single line was straight the first time! The heavy batting was definitely the problem. Folding over the edge for the self-binding was easy. I attached it with a decorative stitch, and that turned out very nicely. A feather stitch closed the open miters at the corners.
Voilà! In less than half the time I spent on the Mickey Mouse quilt, I had a quilt that I think is even cuter and that I was excited to give to Ollie. Anyone who wants to examine it–seamstress or not–is welcome to do so, because I’m proud of this work, not embarrassed by it. The trash can was the right place for the Mickey Mouse quilt and this one is for you, Ollie.
The trials and tribulations I experienced with the Mickey Mouse quilt were happy accidents after all. The puppy quilt turned out beautifully and, when Ollie saw it, he pointed at the puppies and said one of the three words in his current vocabulary–“dog.” Happy first birthday, Ollie.
The high temperature of 85 degrees today broke the old record of 79 degrees. It’s time to get outside and play. First order of business: hit the road on our bikes. We spent an hour on a 14-mile bike ride around the neighboring subdivisions. Yippee!
Second order of business: Sit outside to enjoy the sunshine. Check!
Third order of business: a happy surprise. Ted knows how much I enjoy spring, so every year he buys me a pot of spring bulbs. This year, it was yellow tulips. Happy spring!
George Carlin had a routine he called “Syllable Inflation.” George’s example began with the first World War. At that time, “shell shock” (two syllables) was the designation for soldiers whose combat conditions stressed their nervous systems to the maximum extent, even reaching a point at which the soldiers “snapped.” As George Carlin said, it was a simple, honest, and direct term. During World War II, “shell shock” evolved to “battle fatigue”–now four syllables. “Battle fatigue,” said George, “didn’t seem to hurt as much.” Soldiers’ stress levels after the Korean conflict were referred to as “operational exhaustion”–eight syllables and now, according to George, “It sounds sterile”–not even like a human affliction. Soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War suffered from “post-traumatic stress syndrome.” That’s a decrease to seven syllables, but George pointed out that “there’s a hyphen to bury the pain under the jargon.” George closed this bit with a comment that, if the condition had remained as clear and direct as “shell shock,” many veterans might have received treatment in a far more timely manner. It’s been a long time since I heard that George Carlin routine (he died in 2008), but because of it, I’ve always been attuned to useless syllable inflation.
Like George Carlin’s syllable inflation, in Errors & Expectations (a book I read for my doctoral research), Mina Shaughnessy wrote that someone who has not learned the word “dregs” (one syllable) must say “what is left in the cup after you finish drinking” (twelve syllables, but Mina didn’t include the syllable count). When I hear an inflated word phrase like “wine bottle opener” (six syllables), like Mina, I want to teach vocabulary lessons and tell the speaker/author that we already have a word for that and it’s “corkscrew” (two syllables).
A long time ago, I started making a list of syllable-inflated words that I’ve heard and read, usually in newscasts and newspapers. (The list part won’t surprise people who know me well.) Here are some of the words from my list.
I was cleaning out computer files and found these. I assume they’re from my Aunt Ruth, my usual source of humor. I have no idea how old or recent these signs are. The Indian Hills Community Center in Colorado apparently changes the sign regularly, since some pictures have grass and some have snow. Enjoy!
Dire forecasts for February 2, Groundhog Day, and February 3 included huge (for our area) amounts of snow ranging from 6-13 inches, sleet up to 3 inches, and ice up to 0.2 inches, depending on where the freezing line fell. As we listened to the forecasts, it was a sunny 62 degrees and it seemed impossible that a major storm was brewing.
We, and apparently everyone else, chose to believe the forecasts. On January 31, the warm, sunny day, we went grocery shopping (packed store, empty shelves), we filled the cars’ gas tanks, gassed up the snowblower and started it to make sure it was working, and moved the chairs off the patio and into the pool area to make clearing snow from the patio easier. Schools announced cancellations of in-person classes in advance for February 2-3; businesses announced closings in advance; and grocery stores announced greatly reduced hours of operation for those two days. Forget the “Neither snow nor rain, . . .” adage. We haven’t had (junk) mail delivery for three days.
The forecasts were spot-on, so kudos to the NWS team and the TV meteorologists. The rain started after midnight on February 2, temperatures dropped far enough to produce a little ice, the ice changed to sleet overnight, and then the system dumped 4 inches of snow on us.
Ted and I both had doctor’s appointments on February 2. His doctor called on February 1 to say they would be closed and he needed to re-schedule. My doctor said he’d be open, so I hit the road. With so many things closed and the weather so bad, traffic was very light. Surprisingly, there was one bicyclist pedaling uphill on a snow-covered road. Only one traffic lane was usable, and the ice beneath the snow made driving tricky. I had to stay between 10-15 mph to avoid skidding, but I had no problems.
The Groundhog Day snow ended around 3:00 p.m., but another, larger accumulation was forecast for overnight into February 3, so Ted and I decided to go outside and clear the driveway, patio, and sidewalks. It’s easier to clear 4 inches than 8-12 inches. Then we made soup for dinner, lit a fire in the fireplace, and settled in for a cozy night with a movie.
February 3 brought more snow, lower temperatures, and 35 mph wind gusts. Thanks to the wind and drifting, when the snow finally ended around 4:00 p.m., I couldn’t see the snowbanks created by the snowblower the day before. Finding the edges of the concrete would be a challenge again. Can you find the driveway? It’s somewhere in the middle of that big, blank area.
At least the snowbanks around the patio showed me where the edges of the concrete were. See the icicles from the freezing rain? We only had about 0.1 inches of ice, but around an inch of sleet.
Finding the curves of the two front sidewalks (again) won’t be easy.
Before firing up the snowblower, I measured the snowfall. I measured a few hard, flat areas and they all showed 4 inches on Groundhog Day and 5 more inches on Groundhog Day 2. This spot on the pool deck shows that we had 8 inches total, but you can see that the snow dips toward the light in this area. With the wind, there was a lot of drifting, so some places were 5 inches deep and others were over a foot, depending on how sheltered they were. Isn’t the peaked snow cap on the solar light cute? The lawn chairs against the house look well padded.
Here’s a look at our patio chairs and some of the bushes. Also more solar lights with peaked snow caps.
It’s time to get to work. Again. I like using the snowblower, so I usually clear the large areas and Ted uses a shovel to clean up the corners the snowblower can’t get into. When I finished my snowblower work, Ted used it to clear two neighbors’ driveways for them.
It took an hour to clear the first 4 inches of snow, but nearly two hours to clear the next 5 inches the following day because of the drifting. Here, along the sidewalk beside the house, the snow was 13 inches deep–a real challenge for our small snowblower.
We have a layer of sleet on our back doorstep. Imagine sleet like this under the snow on the roads. MoDOT is short 400 drivers statewide, so the plows have been focusing on the highways. They just started plowing subdivision streets today. Roads could not be treated for ice in advance because of the rain that preceded the freezing temperatures, so driving is hazardous.
The snow didn’t end until about 4:00 p.m. on February 3. By the time we finished clearing it around 6:00 p.m., it was too dark for pictures. Today, the storm has moved eastward and we’re enjoying blue skies, bright sunshine, and a single-digit wind chill, with temperatures expected to drop to around 0 degrees tonight.
Here’s a picture of the pool. The weight of the snow is really stretching the pool cover springs! The ridges in the snow that cross the pool are the straps that hold the cover in place. We can’t identify the inner ridge going around the inside of the pool. The straps are anchored to the pool deck and only extend 12-18 inches beyond the outer edge of the pool, so that ridge is not the edge of the pool. You can see the lowered winter water level where the cover dipped below it, so it’s not frozen edges of the water either. Maybe we’ll find out when it warms up. Supposedly, the pool cover is strong enough for an elephant to walk across it. This isn’t an elephant, but wet snow is definitely heavy.
There’s the driveway! I found the edges.
See the white car camouflaged by the snow in front of our house? Ted asked the driver if she needed help and she said she couldn’t make it up the steep hill of the road beside our house, so she was going to walk home. Ted suggested that she turn around, go the opposite direction from where she’s parked (this upward slope is far less steep), and go around the loop to come down the hill to her house. She said no, she lives halfway up the hill. Huh? So she can only get to the middle by going up???
Yesterday, while we were clearing the snow, a different woman got stuck trying to make a left turn at the corner behind our house. I know she doesn’t know how to drive in snow because she kept spinning her wheels on the ice under the snow, trying to go forward instead of simply backing down the hill (there was no traffic) and (1) getting a faster running start to make it up to the corner, or (2) going around the loop like Ted suggested to the lady today and coming down the hill to the corner. Luckily, our neighbor, Super Steve (a carpenter), has a tool for everything, so he got out his towing straps and his pickup truck. Yes, he has real towing straps that he uses with his commercial-size riding lawnmower to bring his jet ski trailer from behind his house to his pickup on the street. He towed the lady around the corner and then preceded her to her house to make sure she had no further problems. Mission accomplished, so Steve continued around the loop, and returned to his house by going down the hill. Apparently, you can get to the middle of the hill from the top as well as from the bottom.
We used to get regular 8-12 inch snowfalls, but for many years, we’ve rarely had more than 4 inches at a time. This 9-inch snowfall was an Event for our area and it’s kind of exciting. As usual, I expect that within a week, the streets will be clear and dry and, except for the snowbanks, the lawns will be bare of snow again. That’s what I like about living here: snow, but not for weeks or months at a time. Now it’s only 45 days until the spring equinox, and we’ll be seeing forsythia and daffodils before that. Think spring!
About 15 years ago (I don’t remember exactly), I got tired of having our multitude of family portraits in boxes where no one could see them. To get them out of the boxes, I decided to make our upstairs hallway a portrait gallery because: (1) there was nothing hanging on any of those walls; and (2) I didn’t have room for this many portraits anywhere else. I went through the boxes, selected the best pictures, measured and counted them, and bought hundreds of dollars worth of frames ($400+ I think). I framed them and printed identifying labels to attach to the backs of the frames–names, dates, etc. Then I needed a plan to arrange the portraits on the walls.
When Kathy came for a weekend visit, she and I stayed up very late one night, sorting and arranging the framed portraits. We could have quit earlier and gone to bed, but we were really into the project. We measured the hallway walls and laid everything out to scale on the bedroom floors in a variety of ways to construct a pleasing presentation.
The result of Kathy’s and my planning is that Wall #1, at the head of the stairs, is dedicated to our immediate family–Ted, me, and our four children. These are portraits of all six of us as babies, in first grade, and at high school graduation, as well as a few miscellaneous related portraits of our family and Ted’s and my “entire elementary school” pictures. We went to small rural schools, so there was room for everyone in a single picture.
Wall #2, the shortest wall, has just enough room for the two oversized frames in my collection. One is from my Grandma S. and includes the senior pictures of her 1911 high school graduating class of 12 students with three teachers. The other is from Ted’s mom and has the high school graduation pictures of her four children, and the six grandchildren she had at the time she assembled the collage.
Wall #3, the longest, is the wedding and history wall. I have wedding portraits of Ted’s and my parents, our grandparents, ourselves, and our married children. I also have a number of portraits and historically interesting pictures of our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and a few other relatives.
Wall #4, the last remaining space in the hallway, is the grandchildren wall. We already had a few grandchildren at the time Kathy and I designed the gallery and I thought there would be plenty of room for all the grandchildren’s pictures on that wall. That wasn’t true. With nine grandchildren, and multiple pictures of some at different ages, I was doing ok until 2021, when Hadley (grandchild) and Ollie (great-grandchild) were born. We already have one grandchild who is married and had a baby, and several others are at a marriageable age and are likely to present us with more great-grandchildren. To make room for Hadley, Ollie, and future additions to the family, Ted and I spent the afternoon today re-arranging the grandchildren wall. We think we left enough space for at least six additional babies before we have to worry about a future adjustment.
Walls #1, 2, and 3 don’t change much over time because they’re all past history. Wall #4 was good for a long time and has now been compressed to make more space. As our grandchildren began graduating from high school, however, Ted and I realized we needed more gallery space. We decided to start Wall #5 along the stairway. We began with some portraits of ourselves that we didn’t have room for on Wall #3 and then transitioned to graduation pictures. When Alex got married in 2019, we had to find space for the wedding portraits of our grandchildren too, so we decided that, because the stairway wall is pretty long, we can call it the “growing up” family wall. This wall has lots of room for expansion and it gives us something to look at as we go up and down the stairs.
USA Today must hire writers who graduate at the bottom of their English classes because, whenever I read it, I find a plethora of errors. I was skimming that newspaper today and found three glaring errors that should never have made it through the first proofreading. Here’s the first of two errors in an article about yesterday’s bridge collapse near Pittsburgh. The error is highlighted.
Since “latter” is an adjective indicating something is nearer to the end than to the beginning, the word makes no sense at all in this context. A noun, such as “ladder” (a thing, an object) is needed to pull victims out of the debris. “Latter” and “ladder” were words my ESL teachers practiced with their students so the students could learn to distinguish between them. Maybe this USA Today reporter should come to one of our local ESL classes. Next, . . .
“Obtain” means to acquire; “sustain” means to undergo. Did the hospitalized people actually go to the hospital in search of injuries? You’ve got to wonder. And now last, but not least, and on a lighter note, . . .
If Minnie Mouse changed her clothes, you might expect her to “don” (put on clothing) her new outfit, but USA Today sees her change of clothing as a “dawn” (the beginning of an event or occurrence, such as sunrise).
I’m sure my childhood friends and I would have used the correct words in all three of these examples when we were in elementary school. If we hadn’t, our teachers would certainly have corrected us. We definitely wouldn’t make these mistakes as adults reporting for a national newspaper!
I was looking for a picture frame in our storage room and found a box labeled “family photos.” I couldn’t resist opening the box to see which photos were in there. I was surprised to find most of the formal portraits and Christmas pictures we had taken through the 70s, 80s, and 90s while our kids lived at home.
The words “family picture” were not what our kids wanted to hear. It seemed like every time I wanted to take a family photo of a special event or a celebration, I had to listen to the kids’ gripes and groans before telling them that we were going to do it anyway. Period. When it was time to take the pictures, the kids put on their good sportsmanship faces and smiled for the camera, and they all lived through those horrific (sarcasm here) experiences. As a result, we have some nice family pictures that Ted and I (and maybe even the kids) enjoy looking at as we remember those times.
Get comfortable, because here come my favorite family photos from the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
Part 1: The pretty nice pictures
1970: Ted and I had our portrait taken at a department store photo studio. We’ve always liked the picture, but my parents insisted that it didn’t really look like us. ???
1974: Ted came home from work with the news that he would be attending a training in Washington, D.C. and ended that sentence with the suggestion that I join him after the training for a few days. Here we are at the Tidal Basin with the cherry blossoms in bloom–one of the most beautiful sights of the D.C. spring. We moved from D.C. to MO almost 49 years ago, but I still miss the spring flowers in D.C.
1978: This is one of my favorite pictures of our kids. I took it in the family room of our previous house.
1979: New house, new family picture. We took this picture during the first spring in the house where we still live.
1980: I think Ted and I set up a tripod and set the camera timer to take this picture in front of our fireplace.
1982: On a visit to see our parents, I took this picture of the kids climbing one of Grandpa Schroeder’s apple trees. Ok, so these weren’t their climbing positions. I asked them to crowd together for the picture.
1983: We took the following two pictures in Neenah, WI when we attended Russ and Betsy’s wedding. There was a playground in the churchyard (maybe a parochial school?), and it looked like a good setting for the 1983 Christmas pictures.
1988: I think I did a decent job of staging some of our home photos. It seems like a lot of professional photographers include a drapery and a plant, so I did the same. It looks like I should have offset the plant behind Kathy so it wouldn’t look like she’s growing leaves, but this was the time of film, so we had to wait until the pictures were developed to see our mistakes.
1989: We went to Blanchette Park and let the kids pile on the Mazda RX-7. The weather and the fall colors made it a good picture. We felt a little bit naughty driving the car off the roadway and onto the grass to take the picture.
1990: The kids are growing up. We took our Christmas picture on the Lindenwood College campus in the summer because Jeff would be leaving for college in the fall. It looks like the dress code was white shorts.
1994: Ted’s and my 25th anniversary. We had a big party, bought corsages for ourselves (pink carnations, like our wedding flowers), and took pictures in “nice” clothes. When we changed into more comfortable clothes, we didn’t want to waste the corsages, so we pinned them on our T-shirts.
1994: This might be my #1 favorite set of two pictures. We went to Forest Park in St. Louis for the photo shoot. The family group looks very nice, but I especially like the picture of the kids.
1995: I have no idea where we took this picture, but it’s another of my favorite kids’ pictures–maybe my #2 favorite. Don’t the boys look cool with their sunglasses?
Part 2: The slightly “off” photos
1972: Here’s our first professional family photo with our first child, Jeff, and yes, that’s a maternity dress I’m wearing in anticipation of Kathy’s arrival. Oops! There’s baby drool on the shoulder of my dress.
1973: New baby, new family photo. This might be a church directory photo. Ted hasn’t changed his suit, shirt, or tie since last year.
1974: The kids are a year older, so it’s time for an updated portrait. If it worked for Ted, it should work for me. I wore the same dress and the same necklace as I did the year before.
1976: Thom was born, so an updated family photo was on the agenda. This was probably another department store studio photo. Neither Ted nor I remembers why he isn’t in the picture. Weird.
1988: The kids were especially cranky while I set up this picture–maybe because we’d already attended church and Sunday School and they wanted to change clothes and start making lunch. Still, they all smiled nicely. After we took the first picture below, I suggested we take a backwards shot to lighten the group’s mood. It actually worked!
1989: It’s Ted’s and my 20th anniversary, so we had one of the kids take our picture against our default outdoor background: the privet hedge. It was definitely the 80s: big glasses, big hair, and big shoulder pads.
1994: Now it’s our 25th anniversary and we’re wearing the same clothes we did five years ago, except that Ted put on a different tie and we added the corsages. What can I say? We obviously buy clothes we like and we get a lot of wear out of them before we get rid of them.
1993: Here’s another picture taken at Forest Park in a different year than those above. Jeff and Kathy were home for Thanksgiving break so, in spite of the cold and the snow, we had to get the Christmas picture taken. To keep our clothes dry while sitting on the snow, we brought white plastic trash bags with us. If you look closely, you can see the bags underneath the kids.
1994: Jeff, Kathy, and Thom were home from college for Christmas and I wanted a family picture while we were all together. In return for co-operation, I suggested a second photo in which we set our Santa hats to point upward for a touch of humor.
I had fun reviewing the box of family photos and I’m glad I didn’t let all those gripes and groans stop me from taking them.
We took a lot of pictures in 1982, and I posted some of them recently. Here are some others from that photo album that I thought were fun to look at.
One summer day, for no particular reason, Ted took a picture of me as I was sitting on the swing, relaxing on the patio. It turned out pretty nice. Ted gave me that necklace for Valentine’s Day one year.
We celebrated Christmas with our parents in 1982 and have some nice photos of them. Here are Ted’s parents.
I like this picture of my mom with our younger daughter. Mom is holding one of Kari’s many stuffed cats that needed to be included in the picture.
My dad looks pretty happy. This photo was taken in Mom and Dad’s living room. The pine cone wreath on the wall above Dad’s right shoulder was a gift from me one year when I made pine cone wreaths for us, for our parents, and for a few other people as Christmas gifts.
1982 was the year I decided I wanted a ceramic nativity set. I had never done any work with ceramics, but I knew I didn’t want to start with an ashtray or a mug–typical starter projects. I jumped into the deep end of the pool and bought three 15-piece nativity sets: one for us and one for each of our parents as Christmas gifts. I enjoyed making them and I finished all three sets with time to spare, but I’ve never worked with ceramics again.
Here’s my finished nativity. It’s sitting on a bookcase Ted and I bought for $50 the first year we were married. It moved with us three times and was gradually demoted from storing Ted’s and my books in the family room, to storing children’s books in the dining room (before we bought a dining room set), and then to the basement. We finally replaced it in 2012 after 43 years. (Note: I still put out this nativity set every Christmas. When Ted’s parents died, I was given their nativity set and I think I gave it to one of our kids.)
For several years, Thom’s dream was to drive a big rig. He knew everything about big trucks and he had a number of books about them. As we drove on highways, he would name the maker of the truck (Kenworth, Mack, White, Peterson, etc.) from behind by identifying the smokestack. A friend of ours, Mr. Siress, worked as an accountant at a trucking firm in St. Louis. He invited Thom to go with him to his workplace one day. Thom had a chance to sit in the cab of a big truck, and I think he was treated to a short ride around the lot as well. He pretty much floated on air for the following weeks. After the trucking experience, Mr. Siress took Thom to Lion’s Choice for lunch. From that day forward, Mr. Siress walked on water in Thom’s opinion. Here’s Thom, looking at a calendar with Mr. Siress. They’re probably admiring a big truck, judging by the calendar cover. The woman on the left is Mrs. Siress; the woman on the right is Mary M., a neighbor.
Ted turned 40 in 1982, so I planned a big party for him. A friend of mine made a bikini cake for the event. This is also the year I gave him the “Forecasters do it . . . ” shirt. That’s me on the left and Lindell T. on the right.
And that’s it for my selected scanned photos from 1982.
Kathy and Annette weren’t able to join Ted and me and Kari’s family for Christmas between the holidays in December, so we scheduled another Christmas celebration for the MLK weekend. Unfortunately, one of their cats was very ill and had to be hospitalized. The cat was scheduled to be released to return home, but Kathy and Annette weren’t going to be at home. The compromise was that Kathy came to our house for the “Christmas” weekend and Annette stayed home to pick up the cat to avoid the $100/day fees if they’d left him at the vet all weekend. When families get together, you can always feel the absence of those who aren’t present, so it seemed odd to have Kathy with us, but not Annette.
After being with Jeff’s family in Utah for Christmas, then celebrating with Kari’s family, our time with Kathy was Ted’s and my third Christmas get-together. It’s been a true holiday season for us. Kari’s family joined us on Saturday for our Christmas gift exchange. Here’s most of the group, and more gifts to open–some in hand-sewn gift bags made by Kari and me.
The first gift I unwrapped was a lost memory that I was thrilled to recall. In the evenings, I like to shower and then put on something comfortable (more loungewear than pj style) and I have several sets (top and bottom) of fleece Cuddl Duds (not a misspelling) that are nice and cozy in winter. When the weather turned cold, I put away my lighter weight loungewear and headed for the Cuddl Duds, but I couldn’t find the pants for my favorite set. I looked everywhere. Several times. When I removed the gift wrap, there they were! I had totally forgotten that when Kathy and Annette visited us in May 2021, the weather turned unseasonably cold and Annette had only brought shorts with her. I lent her the Cuddl Duds pants to keep her warm on her trip home. I was so glad to see them again! When I couldn’t find them, I considered throwing the top away. It’s a good thing I didn’t.
Ted had a surprise gag gift from Kari. I gave him this shirt for his 40th birthday. At that time, every profession seemed to have a meme about where or how its practitioners “do it.” I came up with this meme for Ted. The shirt was originally sky blue (get it?) and the “rain or shine” letters were in rainbow tones (get it?). I’m not sure how the shirt got to Kari, but she’s been wearing it for yard work, etc. and it’s pretty thin and faded now. She admitted that, for years, she thought “do it” meant “prepare a forecast.” (Note: She was 12 when I gave Ted the shirt.)
I had a gag gift from Kari’s family too. When Sefton was just beginning to talk, he couldn’t say “Grandma.” (I’m pretty sure there are no babies who can clearly pronounce “Grandma.”) Thom thought Sefton’s version of the word sounded like “Meemaw” and he suggested to me that maybe I could be designated as Sefton’s “Meemaw.” I said absolutely not! I know there are women who are happy to be called Meemaw, but I’m not one of them. To me, the word conjures up an image of a frumpy, stooped-over, out-of-shape woman who dropped out of high school, has bad teeth, bad hair, and can barely utter a grammatically correct sentence. I was willing to wait for Sefton’s speech skills to improve to the “Grandma” level. The rest of the family knows this story, so when she saw this shirt online, Kari said she couldn’t resist ordering it for me.
Our weekend together wasn’t exciting, but it was fun. Teddy brought some new games with him and we had a good time playing them together. We also had some hot tub time and, with temperatures in the 30s, that felt really good. As usual, the time passed too quickly and all too soon, Kathy was loading her car to go home. She’s planning a return trip–with Annette–in March.
I think Ted and I are now finished celebrating Christmas 2021. Good times!
We bought this Whirlpool microwave in February 2017.
It was a replacement for the Maytag microwave in the photo below. There was nothing mechanically wrong with the Maytag, but it was 24+ years old and outdated. It was only 1.1 cu. ft. in size, had only 850 watts of power, and the plastic parts were yellowing with age. A newer, larger, more powerful microwave sounded like a good idea. Note: I’d like to add that my Maytag washer and dryer are now 26 years old and are still going strong. Go, Maytag!
Unfortunately, we either bought a Whirlpool lemon or they really don’t make them like they used to, since the Whirlpool unit only lasted a little more than four years. Last fall, it started working sporadically. We could re-boot it by unplugging it, then plugging it back in, but by November, we were doing that trick nearly every day, so we decided it was time to replace the unit. “Supply chain” is becoming a phrase we’d all like to erase from the lexicon, but it’s a fact of life these days. We ordered a new microwave on November 27, 2021 (naturally, it wasn’t in stock) and it finally arrived, ready for installation on January 14, 2022–seven weeks later.
After they removed the old microwave, the installation guys commented on my notations on the wall behind it. When we moved into this house in 1979, microwaves were new and not everyone had one. We updated the kitchen in 1993 and replaced our original 14-year-old microwave with a new model–the white Maytag pictured above. That workhorse was still going 24 years later when we (mistakenly?) retired it in 2017. I noted on the wall that the 1993 Maytag was “not broken” but “replaced to update.” You can see what I thought of the one we replaced it with–the Whirlpool that only lasted a little more than four years. Does “dud” clearly convey my opinion?
Ted and I installed the Whirlpool, but the new Bosch came with free installation (Total Tech benefits from Best Buy), so we let the pros do the work this time. They finished in 30 minutes–much faster than Ted and I did four years ago. It helped that: (1) they knew what to do without reading the step-by-step installation instructions; and (2) there were two of them to hold the weight of the unit while the third one screwed it in place, compared to only Ted and me working.
Frankly, Ted and I didn’t realize how much we use the microwave until it went completely dead about a month before the new one arrived. Without a microwave, we had to adjust menus to avoid needing the microwave, and we became adept at heating some foods in a double boiler to keep them from drying out in a pot or a fry pan. (A double boiler takes a lot longer than a microwave!) The Bosch looks very similar to the Whirlpool, but everything about it feels more substantial. We’re happy to have a working microwave again and we hope this Bosch model will be good for the long haul.
Jeff recently shared this photo. Can you see what’s wrong with the picture?
The photo shows King Faisal of Saudi Arabia signing the United Nations charter in San Francisco in 1945. It’s an important and historically significant picture. Just for fun, a 26-year-old Saudi Arabian student “edited” the photo. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Education mistakenly used the edited photo in Saudi Arabian social studies textbooks in 2017. The Ministry later apologized for its error.
Today we took down our holiday decorations. It’s a good thing we “minimized” decorating this year because of our Christmas trip to Utah. It still took almost three hours to put everything away.
Because we spent Christmas in Utah with Jeff’s family, we had a delayed Christmas / Ted’s birthday celebration at home with Kari’s family. Ted’s choice for his family birthday dinner was pizza and ice cream sundaes. The cooking was easy: pick up the pizzas and put out a make-your-own sundae bar. Kari’s sundae looked the most Christmas-like with mint chocolate chip ice cream, but I think Ted showed the most zest in his application of Reddi-Wip. (That thing over Ted’s head is a holiday ornament hanging from the ceiling light.)
After Ted lit a fire in the fireplace, we took some family pictures.
We minimized our holiday decorations because we’d be in Utah over Christmas. We set some things out and strung a few outdoor lights, but skipped the Christmas tree. I admit that I missed having the tree lights twinkling in the evenings. In the absence of a Christmas tree, we put our Christmas gifts to each other on the coffee table instead of under the tree. Note that some of the gift bags were sewn by Kari and me.
Of course, Thom and I continued our exchange of Christmas Lego. This year, Sky joined in by giving Ted and me Lego Christmas ornaments. He said we can add them to my “infinite collection of Christmas Legos.” That collection keeps growing, and I love it!
After opening our gifts, it was time to relax in the hot tub. The outdoor temperature was in the 30s, so the hot tub felt really good. We closed the evening with a good game of Michigan Rummy. No one ran out of chips, so everyone was a winner. Having the family of one of our children living nearby is the best gift of this Christmas celebration. It means we have lots of good times together throughout the year.
It wasn’t a Holiday Inn, like the Christmas movie, but Jeff and La rented an Airbnb house in Provo, UT for a Christmas get-together. All three of their children (our grandchildren) live in Provo, as does their grandson (our great-grandson), so it was a good place for the family to gather.
Ted and I had an uneventful flight to Utah, but a long travel day–up at 4:00 a.m. CST and arriving in Salt Lake City around 2:00 p.m. MST with barely time to gulp down a sandwich on our layover in Phoenix. It was exciting to see snow on the ground when we arrived. The cold weather was less thrilling. Zack offered to pick us up at the airport to take us to Provo and was at the curb right after we exited the terminal. Ted and I were very hungry, so our first stop was at an IHOP. It was a great opportunity for some one-on-one time with Zack before joining the rest of the family.
When we arrived in Provo, we went to Alex and Kaitlyn’s house and had a nice visit with them. It’s been nine months since our first great-grandchild was born, and we hadn’t seen him in person yet. Photo op, first thing. He looks like Alex did as a baby.
Ted and I wanted to see our grandchildren’s homes so we could picture them when we talk with the kids and hear about what they’re doing, so we also stopped at Zack’s apartment. Zack rooms with five other young men. He claims that cereal is a staple in his menu plan. What can I say? It’s a bachelor pad, right? Kyra spent the past week in Montana, so she arrived at dinner time with Jeff and La and Papa Murphy’s pizzas for dinner. With the entire group present, we let the good times roll!
Alex and Kaitlyn brought over a small Christmas tree to create some Christmas spirit.
Jeff and La planned the entire visit and brought lots of food, games, gifts, etc. from home. We needed some additional items though, so the four women–La, Kyra, Kaitlyn, and I–went grocery shopping in the morning. The planning committee did a great job. We ate well and had fun every day. Christmas dinner was baked ham with mashed potatoes and gravy. Ollie loves mashed potatoes (he got that Idaho gene from his Grandma La), so Grandpa Jeff helped Ollie meet his potato needs. I love the tie on Ollie’s bib! He looks like a junior executive at the head of the table.
On Christmas morning, La made a traditional family treat–cinnamon rolls. The smell and the taste were irresistible! And then there were presents for everyone. (Thanks for the photo, Jeff. Your view of the gift display was better than mine.)
We arranged ourselves on the large sectional sofa prior to distributing and opening gifts. The array of holiday socks called for a picture. Alex had “Spocks.”
Jeff got creative with his gift tags.
He also got creative with his gifts. Ted and I requested gifts that would fit in our luggage on our homeward flight, so Jeff found ways to make gift cards more interesting. One of ours was packed with Idaho potatoes; another was accompanied by an assortment of rocks from Flathead Lake.
This is Ollie’s first Christmas, so he’s still learning the ropes, but he caught on quickly and seemed to enjoy all of his gifts.
After our evening meal, we went downtown to see the holiday lights in Pioneer Park and Temple Square.
When we got back home, Jeff read How Murray Saved Christmas to all of us, and then we watched “Klaus” on Netflix. It was a perfect Christmas Day.
When I looked out the window the next morning, there was fresh snow on the ground. Again, the snow was exciting; the cold temperatures in the 20s, not so much. We bundled up, though, and walked about a mile to Kyra’s house so we could see where she lives with two other young women. On another day, we walked to the BYU campus where Alex and Kyra pointed out their classroom buildings and where Alex works in the IT department.
With all of Jeff’s family present, group photos were a must. I think we have pictures of every possible combination of our group members. Here are the photos of the entire group and of four generations of the family men: Ted, Jeff, Alex, and Ollie.
We had dinner at Outback one evening. Kaitlyn, La, and I left early to shop at Barnes & Noble before dinner. Both venues were in the same shopping center and B&N was selling all hardcover books for 50 percent off. Who can resist that?! Not Kaitlyn, who left the store with two full bags of books. I struggled to select only two books to carry home in my luggage, but I took pictures of 18 others that I would have liked to buy. I’ll use my B&N Christmas gift cards for some and I’ll get some from the library. After book browsing, it was time to meet the rest of the group for dinner.
Naturally, there was time to play with Ollie during our visit. He did really well with a house full of people for several days. He got overtired because he didn’t want to miss any of the fun, but he was never crabby. I’m sure he enjoyed all the attention–part of being the first child for Alex and Kaitlyn, the first grandchild for Jeff and La, and the first great-grandchild for Ted and me. Get used to lots of attention, Ollie.
This was a visit with Jeff’s family, so it’s a given that there were lots of games to play–Sheephead, Skull King, “Zahjong,” and Catch Phrase. They were all fun. “Zahjong” is Mahjong with adaptations and scoring developed by Zack. I was hesitant to try it at first, but after watching a few rounds, I bit the bullet and joined in. Surprise! I even won three times!
We played several games on our last evening together, and ended with Catch Phrase. We had two teams of four sitting in a circle in the living room. It was the older people (Jeff and La, Ted and me) vs. the younger people (Alex, Kaitlyn, Kyra, Zack). We sat alternately in our circle–old, young, old, young–and the game got crazy. I can’t describe what happened because it was a “be there” moment, but it was so much fun that, even when we were tired and knew we had to go to bed so we could all get up early in the morning, we decided to play “one more game” before quitting. Unfortunately, that game tied the score, so we decided to play one more to break the tie. As a result, we all went to bed very late, but it was worth every minute of lost sleep. It was a joyous ending to our time together and spending this holiday with family we haven’t seen for over two years was the best Christmas gift of all.
To celebrate his birthday, Ted and I made our usual trip to the Lake of the Ozarks to have dinner at Bentley’s, our favorite restaurant. Tonight, to continue his birthday celebration, we had dinner at Dewey’s, our favorite pizza restaurant.
Dewey’s has a great customer appreciation program. For every $150 we spend (about 5 meals for us), we receive a $10 gift certificate for our next meal. After several $10 gifts, we receive a big appreciation gift. It usually includes some Dewey’s glasses, some kind of Dewey’s apparel, and a gift certificate. Tonight was our big gift night. When the manager brought the gift bag to our table, I kidded her by asking, “How did you know it was Ted’s birthday?” “Is it?” she responded. A minute later, she delivered carrot cake for two as a free dessert.
We would eat at Dewey’s anyway, because we like the pizza, but the gifts make it an even nicer place to go. Here’s what we received tonight: two glasses, two pair of warm holiday socks, and a $50 gift certificate. Naturally, the socks say “Dewey’s” on the bottoms. The snowman figurine is one of our holiday decorations.
After learning a variety of sewing skills while making drapes for Teddy’s and Dylan’s bedrooms, Kari said she wanted to learn some additional skills by making re-usable Christmas gift bags. We worked together one afternoon and completed one bag for her. She took notes as we went along and has been working on her own, making additional bags at home. That’s a teacher’s dream: the student who transitions through learning and practicing to independence.
As long as I was going to teach Kari how to sew gift bags, I decided to make some for myself. Rectangular gifts are easy to wrap with paper; the gift bags are great for oddly-shaped items and for soft items (usually clothing) that don’t come in a box.
I made a variety of bag styles: sacks with handles, sacks with drawstrings and top ruffles, and rectangular-bottomed bags (like shopping bags). The finished products present a colorful display.
One of Willie Nelson’s fans described him as (I’m paraphrasing) “a wonderful blanket, crocheted by your favorite relative, that you’ve had for 30 years–tattered corners, mended holes, and faded colors, . . . but all soft in the right places.”
In my humble opinion, I have the privilege of (temporarily) owning one of the world’s great rolling pins.
My great-grandpa took this piece of hard rock maple, shaped it on his lathe, and gave it to his daughter, my grandma, when she was newly married in 1921. When Grandma stopped making pies, she gave it to my mom, her oldest daughter. What a treat for my dad! He loved pie! If it had been awhile since Mom made a pie, Dad would casually say something like, “I remember pie. It’s round, . . . it has fruit inside, . . .” and that was Mom’s cue to get out the rolling pin.
Given my Dad’s penchant for pie, I was surprised when Mom said she was finished making pies and handed the rolling pin down to me. It’s a single piece of wood, so I can roll it smoothly and evenly with open palms. The handles have a wonderful fit under my hands. This rolling pin has been seasoned by use for 100 years by Grandma, Mom, and me, so dough never sticks to it.
I love this rolling pin and I think about Great-grandpa shaping it and Grandma and Mom using it every time I get it out. Today, I used it to make two apple pies: one for a neighbor who had minor surgery this morning and, as long as I was baking, one for Ted and me.
Many years ago, Kari asked me to pass this “heritage” rolling pin on to her. I’m still making pies, so she’s still waiting for it, but someday, Kari, you’ll be the fourth generation to use the rolling pin made by your great-great-grandpa. Which of your boys will you give it to when you’re finished making pies?
There’s a family in our subdivision that apparently admires the Clark Griswold style of outdoor Christmas lighting.
Here’s the front. That large tree overhangs most of the width of the street, so driving past the house provides a small taste of what it’s like to drive through one of those commercial “winter wonderlands.”
The back yard is also fully decorated. This is the visible portion of the back yard when viewed between the two houses behind the “Griswolds.” Not visible: the decorated above-ground pool and playset on the left, and the decorated storage shed on the right.
Today’s date is a rarity. The date, 12/02/2021, is an 8-digit palindrome, just like 02/02/2020, which occurs only 12 times this century. You’ll have to wait until 03/02/2030 for the next 8-digit date palindrome.
Today’s date is unique in another way. If you drop the slash marks from the date and enter it into an analog calculator, it reads the same upside down.
The year 2021 has 22 palindrome dates of at least four digits, a phenomenon that occurs only twice in each century, during the years ending in 11 and 21. It won’t happen again until 2111, 90 years from now.
Today’s rare palindrome kicks off a string of nine consecutive palindrome dates in December, beginning with 12/1/21 and ending with 12/9/21. There were ten palindrome dates in January 2021, running from 1/20/21 through 1/29/21. For the first time in history, Inauguration Day fell on a palindrome date: 1/20/21. That won’t happen again until 1/20/3021, 1,000 years from now.
It happens only twice in a century and we’re here to enjoy it. Life is good, isn’t it?
I recently saw a list of the AFI’s (American Film Institute) 100 all-time best movie quotes. The movies listed are from 1931 (Dracula)-2002 (Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers). I’m not sure how often the list is updated to include new movies. My personal all-time favorite (and powerful) movie quote is from the 1939 movie Gone with the Wind. The line? “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” The AFI also ranks this as the #1 best movie quote. Here are 20 more of Ted’s and my favorite movie quotes.
The November 19 lunar eclipse was billed as a partial eclipse. According to NASA, 99.1 percent of the moon was shrouded by the earth’s umbra (the darkest shadow) during mid-eclipse, making it very close to a total lunar eclipse. It was the longest partial eclipse of the century–between 2001 and 2100–lasting 3 hours and 28 minutes, and the longest eclipse in the past 580 years, according to the Holcomb Observatory. Lunar eclipses usually last about an hour, but this time, the moon was farther from the earth, so the earth cast a wider shadow and it took the moon longer to pass through that shadow. The peak of the eclipse occurred at 3:03 a.m. our time.
Ted and I are night owls (and we’re retired), so we stayed up for the eclipse and slept in the next morning. We went outside around 2:30 a.m. to watch the peak of the eclipse and planned to go back into the house by 3:04 a.m. That’s not what happened. The sky was so beautiful, we stayed outside for over an hour. With the moon in shadow and a crystal-clear night sky, we could see far more stars than we normally do. The moon was beautiful, the stars were beautiful, and the night was perfectly calm. It was, however, only 24 degrees and we were dressed in our pj’s and bathrobes with Crocs on our feet. After an hour, we admitted that, although it was still a beautiful sight, we were getting cold, so we went back into the house.
I love looking at stars and finding constellations. With the moon darkened, the stars were unusually bright, but they weren’t bright enough to see them well in the few photos I took. Only Orion and the dog star, Sirius, were strong enough to show in the black sky. In the photo below, that’s the fully eclipsed moon on the right (my cell phone camera picked up all of the moon’s radiant light, so it looks full), and Sirius is in the left center. Orion is in the middle. A few of the stars show well; all of them are visible if you zoom in on the photo–or maybe if you look at the photo in a dark room.
In the opposite direction, we could see every star in the Big Dipper. Usually, there are at least two stars that can’t outshine the city light pollution. I don’t recall ever seeing the Big Dipper in a vertical position, but I don’t often check the night sky at 3:00 a.m. At this time of night, the handle rose directly upward from the horizon and the dipper was above it. It was easy to find the North Star to locate the Little Dipper, but even with the moon dark, I couldn’t see all seven stars in that constellation. I found Cassiopeia, but couldn’t see the Seven Sisters (aka the Pleiades), my favorite constellation. They might have been lower in the sky, behind a tree or a house.
This was a stunning lunar eclipse and a perfect night for viewing it. Theresa Massony, the author of an article I read about this eclipse wrote, “This lunar eclipse is not to be missed, unless you have time to wait a whole century for the next one.” So true! Ted and I took the time to watch this one. If we’re still around in 2100, we’ll catch that one too.
The high temperature at our house was 82 degrees today. It was a good day for a bike ride and the fall colors are at their peak, so Ted and I mounted up and admired the yellows, oranges, and reds in our neighborhood.
I mentioned in years past that I think everyone in this area planted at least one redbud for its spring flowers (we planted three) and at least two burning bushes (we have six) for their fall color. This house is near ours and has two old, huge burning bushes growing side-by-side. What a display!
The pictures below tell the story. Enjoy the yellow, orange, and red colors.
Here’s a tree that’s losing its leaves from side-to-side. According to this tree, fall is half over.
As we biked the last mile, we saw this view at one of the lakes near our house. It shows a variety of colors in a single scene.
The weather was cool and rainy, so I decided it was a good time to go through another old photo album to pull some pictures of good memories. The year is 1982, when Ted’s parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Here is their wedding portrait and their anniversary photo. Look at that wedding veil! All that fabric on the floor is her veil, not the train of her dress. I knit the doily the pictures are standing on as a gift to Mom one year.
The celebration began with a dinner at the church. Dad was ill and hospitalized at the time of the anniversary party. He couldn’t be at the dinner with Mom, but her sisters sat beside her for the meal–Verna on the left (below) and Leona on the right.
After the dinner, Dad was released from the hospital for a few hours to be with the family at home. We took a few pictures while Dad was at home. Here is the anniversary couple.
I don’t have any pictures of Mom and Dad with their children–Ted and his siblings–or their grandchildren, but I do have photos of Mom and Dad with their siblings. Here’s Dad with his sister, Marcella; his brother, Bob (behind Cella); and his brother, John (right).
Of course, the next picture is Mom with her siblings: her brother, Clinton; and her sisters, Leona (center) and Verna (right), sitting beside her.
Just for fun, here’s a picture of the three girls, circa 1912. Left to right, it’s Mom, Verna, and Leona. Those are big hair bows. It looks like Verna and Leona have identical skirts, blouses, shoes, and hairstyles. All three girls have similar necklaces and Loella’s hair and clothes are similar, if not identical to her older sisters’. So pretty!
Returning to 1982, Mom’s wedding dress didn’t fit her after 50 years, but it fit Lisa, her granddaughter, so Lisa modeled it for us.
When we finished taking photos, there was visiting, cake, and more food for everyone. Two of the grandchildren admired the cake and were probably hoping to have a piece ASAP. That’s Kari (4) and Kathy (9).
During that same summer visit to Wisconsin, there was also some kind of celebration with my parents, but I can’t remember what it was. The only significant date in that time period was my mother’s 60th birthday, but we have no pictures of a cake or presents, so I don’t know if that was the special event or if it was just an opportunity for the entire family to be together. While we were all dressed up (after church?) we took pictures. The first photo below shows the entire family. Left to right are Tom and Jo; then Ted and me with our kids; Steve (still single) in the red shirt; Russ and Betsy (dating, but not engaged until six months later); Grandpa L; Bev with her children, Eric and Cheryl (her husband, my brother Denny, died 5 years earlier); and Mom and Dad.
We took a picture of Mom and Dad and a picture of them with their children (me and my siblings). Back in the days of film, we couldn’t check to see if my eyes were closed or if Steve was looking at the camera. Photos like this give us things to laugh about later.
Then we took individual photos of each of us kids. Ted had glasses with photochromic lenses that went from clear to dark in bright light, so he looks like he’s wearing sunglasses in all of our outdoor pictures during the time he had those glasses.
While we were all dressed up, someone (probably my dad) took a photo of Ted and me with our children. I sewed the girls’ matching Strawberry Shortcake dresses.
Grandma wanted a picture with her granddaughter, Kari. If the lilacs and the snowball bush were blooming, this is around Memorial Day.
After the photo shoot session, it was time to change into informal clothes and have some fun. My dad joined the sibling chorus line in the back yard. I assume my mom took the picture.
Then Grandpa took Tommy and Jeff to the mill pond and taught them how to fish.
It looks like June 1982 gave us a chance to be with all of our family members for some good times and good memories.
I recently sewed a fall runner for our dining room table. The directions told me to make 16 of each type of leaf, so I did, but I decided I didn’t need a runner that long. Because I already had the extra leaves, my choices were to (1) throw them away; (2) make a smaller table centerpiece for the kitchen table; or (3) make a centerpiece and give it to someone else. I chose (3). I’m celebrating a friend’s birthday with her this week. She has a smaller table than I do and she decorates with lots of fall colors, so I decided to give it to her for her birthday.
Here’s my table runner.
This is the smaller centerpiece I made with the leftover leaves.
Now it’s time to work on another project. Will it be something new or will I work on the project I hoped to finish by February 2021 (first paragraph of the link) and haven’t touched for almost a year? Time will tell.
We run a dehumidifier in the basement over the summer to keep the concrete walls and floor nice and dry in the St. Louis humidity. About ten days ago, we received a letter informing us that the dehumidifier we’ve been happily running 24/7 for six consecutive summers could unexpectedly burst into flame. We qualified for a settlement equal to half the price of the dehumidifier. To claim the money, I had to submit the usual information–name, email address, model and serial number, etc. as well as a photo of the dehumidifier showing the specification sticker, model number, serial number, my name, the date of the photo, and evidence that I had cut the power cord on the device.
I emailed that information to the specified address on (see below) October 17. Today, only seven days later, a check for close to $150 arrived in the mail. That’s the fastest re-imbursement I’ve ever experienced! We’ll buy a new dehumidifier next spring, but we already have half the cost of it covered by this refund. Whoopee!
Fall is coming and the leaves on the trees are beginning to change their colors. I used to love looking at our sugar maple tree in the fall, but since I can’t do that any more, I have to settle for looking at Larry’s sugar maple tree across the street. A mature sugar maple stood where you see a small tree on the right, but it died the year after ours did and, like us, Larry had it cut down, then replaced it with a new tree.
After a nice stretch of warm weather (mid- and upper 70s), our thermometer topped out at 87 degrees today. The official high was a few degrees lower, but we live here, not at the airport. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be somewhere in the 50s–quite a change. To celebrate this last day of summer-like weather, the flowers in our yard put on a showy display of blooms.
Ignore the deadheads on the rosebushes and just admire the blooms. The plants are going to succumb to frost pretty soon, and we’ll have to cut the roses back, so deadheading at this time of the year is low on the to-do list. Here are the knockout roses and two beds of carpet roses. Mind you, it’s almost Hallowe’en and these bushes are putting out blooms as if it’s late June.
The hibiscus tree has given us anywhere from 1-10 fresh blooms every day all summer. (The flowers only last one day.) Today, it had seven blooms–again, just as if October = summer. Check out all the buds that haven’t opened yet. Will they make it before the temperature drops to freezing? The whitish edges on the flowers prove that it’s fall. That effect has been increasing as the daylight has been decreasing. Apparently, tropical flowers depend on a lot of daylight to look their best.
I’m not one of those people who gets all excited about fall, pumpkin spice, and sweater weather. In fact, I’m getting ready to count down to the first day of spring, but meanwhile, today’s weather was awesome!
I’ve been having some occasional pain in my right knee for several months–nothing serious, and nothing long-lasting. And then . . . while Ted and I were busy getting things ready for Julian’s visit, I had a sharp, extremely painful spike of pain in my knee that lasted about an hour. I had a second similar spike three weeks later. After checking with Dr. Online, I decided I probably damaged the meniscus in some way and, given the pain level, I should probably see a doctor. I expected him to tell me either: (1) I’d have to take it easy for a number of weeks to let the injury heal; or (2) I’d need surgery to repair the meniscus.
I made an appointment, the doctor ordered an x-ray, I told him my theory, and he said, “That would be a good theory–if you had a meniscus. Unfortunately, your knee is bone-on-bone.” Gulp! This is how bone-on-bone looks. Yessir! Those bones are definitely touching each other.
I thought I’d better change my plans from resting my knee to replacing my knee. Let’s just say I wasn’t happy about the idea. But wait! Modern medicine can inject a lubricating cushion into the knee joint. I’ll be getting a series of three injections, given one week apart and I will most likely have relief from the pain in the first week and for up to six months. I was so excited about avoiding surgery and a painful rehab period that I didn’t ask about repeat injections after six months, but I’m holding that thought.
The exterior of the entire first floor of our house, as well as our beehive-style chimney, is made of antique bricks. (Antique = recovered from a torn-down structure.) Ted and I like the look of the antique bricks, but they’ve been here for 42 years and we noticed there are some bricks in the chimney that appeared to be loose, as well as some on the house that have broken edges from weathering. We called Mr. T, our chimney sweeper, and asked him to check things out and to do whatever tuckpointing is necessary. He replaced the loose bricks in the chimney about a week ago. After an entire week, I happened to look upward to the roofline and saw something on the roof ridge. It’s on the right end of the ridge.
Ted got out his ladder, climbed up on the roof, and removed the half-full can of diet 7-Up. Way to go, Ted!
Last summer, as we biked and biked and biked through the neighboring subdivisions, Ted and I noticed that quite a few homes have planting borders by Curb Appeal. We talked to some of the homeowners and they were all very pleased with the work they had done. In spring, we went to Curb Appeal, made our selections, and signed a contract to have the work done. John, the manager, said they would schedule us when our concrete work was completed because the curbs butt up to the concrete edges in some places and it’s easier to do them last. The concrete work wasn’t finished until September 23, so Curb Appeal scheduled us for the prep work October 1 and installation the following week. It was an interesting process to watch.
Prepping meant cutting away the sod where the curbs would be laid.
HOW TO LAY CURBING
There’s a machine in one of the trucks that mixes the concrete blend. Then it gets dumped into the yellow wheelbarrows you can see in the photo below and taken to where it’s needed. Those wheelbarrows have a little motor (you can see it on the wheelbarrow in the photo above) that is engaged by a lever on the handle. I bet that makes it a lot easier to haul concrete around! One guy shovels the mix into the curbing machine (below) and the machine operator (John) works backward as the machine releases and forms the curbing. The machine also lays two lines of rebar within the curbing as it moves.
After the curbing is laid, the finishing guy smooths it out and gently sweeps off the scraps.
The next step is to cover the curbing with release.
Then the finishing guy takes a roller with a pattern on it and rolls it over the curbing, first in one direction, then in the opposite direction, to create a pattern on the finished curb.
The expansion joints are cut about two inches deep on three sides–front, top, and inside edges.
Then the excess release is blown off. This mess isn’t bad at all. Check the following picture to see how much dust the concrete crew raised.
The guys did a nice clean-up job, raking the lawn and picking up the stray crumbs of concrete from inside the curbing as well.
The final step is to spray a sealant on the curbing and to tape off the area to avoid anyone stepping on it while it dries.
HOW TO LAY STEPPING STONES
When John was here for his final check before beginning the prep work, I mentioned that we didn’t realize we needed a sidewalk from the hot tub to the existing sidewalk at the house until the concrete job was finished and we walked around the hot tub. We can go around the hot tub, a pergola post, and the patio furniture (four turns) to reach the existing sidewalk, but a direct route toward the driveway/garage (no turns) would be much nicer. John said they also lay stepping stones. We checked out his displays and decided that would be even nicer than a regular sidewalk, so John marked where the stones would be placed.
To keep the stones at ground level, the ground had to be dug out along the lines John marked. Then he re-marked the edges for a reason unknown to me.
John (right) and Trevor (left) placed heavy-duty plastic in each hole where a stone would be poured. Then the guy in the center brought the motorized wheelbarrows over and shoveled the concrete mix onto the plastic in the holes. John and Trevor moved the concrete around to fill the holes completely and flattened the tops to ground level.
Trevor sprinkled release on the stones and then pressed a stamp on each one to give it a stone-like texture. When he finished, John used a little blow-torch to melt the excess plastic away from the edges of the stones. I guess, in theory, we could dig down a few inches and lift the stones out of their plastic beds.
Of course, the excess release had to be blown away. Of course, we had to clean the excess dust off the surrounding concrete, furniture, etc. It wasn’t nearly as awful as the clean-up after the concrete work.
Just like the curbing, the last step was to spray sealant on the stones and to tape off the area.
We really like the results and have been getting a lot of compliments from passers-by on how nice the concrete and the curbing look.
This area (curbing around the trees in the left center and around the arbor vitae hedge on the right) looks even nicer now because the grass has come in and the stepping stones are surrounded by green. They provide a great shortcut from the storage shed and the hot tub to the driveway and the garage. That’s one more home improvement job checked off the list.
See a performance at the Fox Theatre. One of Julian’s reasons for coming to St. Louis at this time was to see a performance by comedian Bill Burr at the Fox Theatre. Julian is not accustomed to living in the suburbs, so his plan was to simply take public transportation from our house to the Fox. That would be great–if the @#$%&! voters in our county had not voted down public transportation many years ago. We lent Julian one of our cars to drive to the Fox. He wanted a Steak ‘n’ Shake fix while he was here and decided to stop at Steak ‘n’ Shake for a carry-out dinner (no dine-in available) to eat on his way to the program. He enjoyed the performance–and the dinner–and surprised us by being back at our house by 10:30–long before his curfew. (Just kidding.)
Take bicycle rides. Kari left her bike at our house for Julian to use at will. In return, he adjusted her derailleur for her. It was a good deal for both parties. In addition to our bike ride on the Dardenne Greenway, Julian and I biked through the surrounding neighborhoods and he biked some of the St. Peters bike trails with Kari, as well as going out on his own.
Swim. Julian has always enjoyed our backyard swimming pool. Unfortunately, he had some follow-up surgery on his trampoline-injured knee just a week before arriving at our house and wasn’t supposed to soak the wounds in water. He couldn’t resist the pool, however, so he decided to try waterproof bandages. He tested them and they seemed to work fine, making it possible for him to use the pool after all.
Have pizza/calzones; play games. Saturday’s dinner was pizza for Ted and me and a Calzone for Julian. In the evening, we decided to play a game. Julian selected Phase 10, a card game he’d never played. He won on his first try. Unfortunately for him, he tried to figure out my strategy as I took the lead in the next game (I followed him in the play order). In frustration, he mentioned that he just couldn’t see what strategy I was using. Maybe because I didn’t have a strategy. I pointed out that the game is designed for ages 8+ and really depends more on which cards you draw than on any strategy. Julian decided he prefers games that involve strategy. We’ll go for that on his next visit.
Roller skate. On Sunday, Kari’s entire family came over to visit and to have dinner with us. Before dinner, Kari and the four boys decided to go roller skating (free for all, because Kari’s a manager at the rink and gave each boy a family pass for entry). When they returned to the house, we had a chicken dinner. Chicken is a big hit with Kari’s family, and even though they ate a lot of it, the highlight of the meal was the ice cream sundae bar.
Dylan, the artist, had the prettiest sundae, . . .
. . . but Teddy’s sundae was the most colorful.
And then it was Monday, Julian’s departure date. Luckily for Ted and me, Julian’s departure time was changed to two hours later than expected, so in addition to the eight extra hours we had with him after his early arrival, we had two more extra hours with him before his departure. We hope Julian had as much fun with all of us as we did with him, and we all hope he’ll visit again soon. Love from all of us to Julian.
Today, Ted and I took Julian and Teddy to see the Cahokia Mounds. Cahokia Mounds is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Originally the site of a city of 10,000-20,000 people (larger than either London or Paris at that time), it was the site of the largest prehistoric native civilization north of Mexico. Monk’s Mound at Cahokia is the second-largest mound in the world. In fact, Monk’s Mound has a larger base than the Great Pyramid of Cheops (also a UNESCO WHS), although it is not as high as that pyramid. Eighty of the 120 original mounds at Cahokia have survived. The most direct route from our house to the park is I-70, so we crossed the Mississippi River via one of my favorite bridges: the Stan Musial Bridge at St. Louis.
The entrance to the park’s Interpretive Center is impressive.
These are called the “twin mounds.” Conical mounds like the one on the right are always burial mounds; flat mounds like the one on the left usually indicate a place where citizens lived. The higher one’s social rank, the higher one lived on the mound. Commoners’ homes surrounded the base of the mound.
We saw a herd of deer on our guided tour of the park. The tour guide said deer are everywhere in the park.
The park’s big attraction is Monk’s Mound, the largest one. This is also a flat mound, but it is so large that there are four levels of social importance on it. Because it is so large, it is likely that an important leader (a king-like official) lived at the top of Monk’s Mound. You can count three terraces below the top of the mound if you look at the outline of the mound on its left side.
Every visitor’s to-do list includes climbing to the top of Monk’s Mound, and our group was no different. The two young men nearest the bottom of the stairs are our boys. There are two flights of stairs on Monk’s Mound with a total of 154 steps. Julian climbed them twice.
Here are Julian and Teddy after they reached the top of Monk’s Mound.
Julian got creative on his way down. Teddy (at the top of the flight) simply used the stairs.
There’s a nice view of the park from the top of Monk’s Mound. You can see another, smaller flat-topped mound in the upper center of the photo below.
From the top of Monk’s Mound, it’s also possible to see the St. Louis skyline, including the Gateway Arch. (Due to the clouds, you have to look closely to see the Arch.)
Cahokia Mounds includes a structure called “Woodhenge.” It is the astronomical equivalent of England’s Stonehenge, with 48 poles set around its circumference and another pole in its center. At the spring and fall equinox, there are celebrations at Woodhenge. If you stand in alignment with two of the outer poles and the center pole at sunrise on the equinox, then look east, you can see the sun rise over Monk’s Mound in line with the center pole. The dark, flat surface behind the center pole in the lower center of the photo is Monk’s Mound.
Rain showers moved into the area on our way home and we saw a stunning rainbow. It was a pretty way to end an enjoyable afternoon with two of our grandsons.
