Carlisle County Fair

Lexi spent Fridqy night with me, and we went into Bardwell Saturday morning to see the parade. I thought this 'train' out of barrels was cute.
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I hope there were no emergencies in the county Saturday morning, because I think every emergency vehicle in the county was in the parade.




There were several floats, including the Golden Oldies band.

And the 'queen' of the fair.


Also, anyone who wanted to ride their ATV in the parade was welcome. There were several family groups.



There were also tractors in a variety of colors.

And horses. The girl whose back is in most of the pictures is Lexi. A lot of the people in the parade were throwing candy, frisbies, etc.

After the parade, we went to the fairgrounds/county park/little league field to view the exhibits. My lace shawl got a red ribbon and my baby blanket got white. The red earned $1. They paid it in cash. Not long ago I ran across the check I got about 60 years ago at a fair in Minnesota. I think it was for an apron I made in 4H, and I believe it was for $.50. I was more interested in having a check than in having fifty cents.

We were disappointed that the rides didn't open until about 6 pm. I had promised Lexi that we would 'do' the rides, so we had to go back.


She liked these two, but they weren't my style.


This is something I probably would have liked twenty years ago, but seemed too wild for me now. Lexi wanted to try it, even though she had watched the way it worked. She was alone in the seat, and did some sliding around. When she got off, she said she was scared. We rode the Merry-Go-Round twice, and three other things. She got a large slice of pizza for her supper, and last thing before we left, we got a funnel cake to share. We ate about half of it that night, and the rest on Sunday morning.

What a difference 60+ years make

In 1945, my brother was born with a cleft palate - the soft tissue was there, but was rolled back, leaviing a large hole. He was unable to suck, so was bottle-fed from the start. Mother had to cut a rather large hole in the nipple so the milk would drip into his mouth. He was about ywo years old when he had surgery to correct the defect. We lived in west-central Minnesota, so the surgery was done at the Gillette Children's Hospital in Minneapolis or St Paul. The local doctor made the arrangements, and Mother and Jim took the train to 'the cities.' Mom said that as she was registering Jim, a nurse asked if he was the Ross baby. When Mom said he was, the nurse grabbed him out of her arms and practically ran down the hall. When the paperwork was complete, they told Mom to go home and they would call when he was ready to be discharged. She was not allowed to see him. One of Dad's sisters was a nurse in another Minneapolis hospital. She thought that as a nurse she might be allowed in, but she wasn't. Mom finally returned home to wait. I think it was about two weeks before they called. By then Jim seemed to have forgotten us.

In 1969, just after he turned one, my son Dominic was in the hospital twice. First he had a virus that settled as a cyst under his chin, which they brought to a head and then lanced. He was in Cooper Hospital in Camden NJ for thirteen days that time, then was home for two weeks, and then back in Cooper with meningitis for almost three weeks. At that time, there were extended visiting hours on the pediatric floor for parents, but when visiting hours were over, we had to leave. I visited him every day, but there was no thought of staying at the hospital.

About ten years later, my daughter Carmen had surgery to put wires/pins in her hand to keep two broken metacarpals in place while they healed. That was a two-night stay I think at Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia - one before and one after the surgery. I was there all afternoon holding the basin for her to vomit. We saw very little of nurses. I don't remember if I had to go home for the night, but I know I did go home. She was twelve or thirteen at that time, so understood that I'd be back the next day.

Another ten or twelve years, and granddaughter Alyssa had her tonsils out. Carmen spent the night in her hospital room, sleeping in a recliner.

Last Friday, my four-year-old great-nephew had surgery to remove a lump. The doctor called it a hemangioma (a group of blood vessels), and said it was certainly benign, but it is being biopsied anyway. This was outpatient surgery, although my niece was told to pack a bag for him just in case they needed to keep him overnight. An educator brought Aidan a doll dressed for surgery just as he was, and explained to him what would be done. His parents were there when he was taken into surgery, they were there when he woke up, and I'm sure one of them would have been there all night if he had needed to stay. How much better than the way things were done sixty years ago!

More burning, but not myself

I took the paper trash to the burn barrel again this morning, and then added prunings after I got the fire going. I didn't burn myself this time, though. When the sun came up over the bald cypress tree so the barrel was no longer in shade, I sat on the back porch to rehydrate and knit (a simple project - easy knitting) I had put several long pieces that were too large to cut with my pruners (I had sawed them off the trees) into the barrel with two or three feet of them above the top of it. In a few minutes, I saw one of them fall out onto the ground, and as I was picking up my leather-palmed gloves, I heard others fall. The gloves allowed me to pick them up and put them back in the barrel. I don't like wearing gloves except in winter to keep my hands warm, but they were important in this instance. Those long limbs were the main reason I stayed on the porch rather than going in the house. It was nice outside in the shade though, with an occasional light breeze. I can tell that we are well past the summer solstice and closer to the autumn equinox. Near the solstice, the sun only came about two inches onto the south end of the porch - it now comes about two feet.

About noon, I came in the house, fixed lunch and turned on the computer. Now I think I'll do more knitting as I listen to news programs on NPR. Then about 6:30 I'll go out and mow for 45 minutes. That's how long a tank of gas lasts in my mower.

I started a new project yesterday - a pair of socks for my 3-3/4 year old great-granddaughter in New Jersey. When they visited a few weeks ago, her sneakers got left at Alyssa's house. She finally brought them here on Saturday for me to mail back along with some other things. I decided a pair of socks would be a good addition to the package. Then today I got a request from daughter Carmen for a baby blanket for one of her co-workers. The shower is September 9 - yeah, I guess I have time. But first finish the lace shawl so I can enter it in the Carlisle County Fair next week, and Rose's socks so I can mail that package.

The black walnuts are dropping.

That means there's now an extra step to mowing certain parts of the yard. It also means I need to be more careful walking around - those things can throw you off very easily. I've started a pile of them beside the driveway. It will probably be pretty large by the time they all fall, and then the squirrels will eat them all during the winter. I may pick up a few after the hulls come off, but they're so hard to crack that I may not. I told Lexi that every time she's here for the next couple of months she'll need to pick up nuts.

Knitting:

I had a real bad disappointment yesterday. I finished that lace shawl on Friday. When Alyssa was here yesterday, she picked it up to look at it and said, "What's with the hole." Sure enough there was a large hole two or three inches up from the bottom. Apparently I dropped a stitch that didn't release until Lexi swung the shawl around earlier. I've spent several hours unraveling and trying to get a row of stitches on the needle so I can re-finish the thing. Part of me wants to just drop it in the burn barrel. I really think I won't try anything that delicate again. The neuropathy makes it too difficult.

Speaking of the burn barrel, I took the paper trash out to it on Friday morning and got the fire going. Then I started cutting up some of the tree prunings and putting them in. I got quite a bit burned, but there's still a lot more piled up. In the process, I burned the thumb and forefinger on my left hand. Not bad, but I couldn't knit for the rest of the day, so I read instead. Then in the evening, I used the burn as an excuse not to do any mowing. I took a shower, put on decent clothes, and went to the reception at the Art Guild in Mayfield. I picked Lexi up and took her with me, and then she spent the night here.

Weather, knitting, etc

My sister Pauline, who lives in Florida, called me mid-afternoon yesterday to ask if we were flooded. At that time, the sun was out, and I had not heard of the flooding in Louisville. She said she had called our sister Renee, who lives in Louisville, and Renee is OK. I saw some pictures from Louisville today - looks bad. I was planning to mow after 6:30 yesterday, when most of the yard is in shade, but that wasn't to be. While I was listening to All Things Considered and Marketplace, they kept cutting in with weather alerts, but the storms seemed to be to the south and east of me, and it still looked all right here. Then, shortly before I was going to put on shorts and sneakers, a large, dark cloud covered Milburn, a strong wind blew up, and rain fell. No mowing - oh shucks! I don't know how much rain we got, but it came off and on most of the night.

Today was my oncology appointment. It was at 10:45, so I was able to go to the knitting group at the coffee shop afterward. The appointment was routine, with my normal Vel-Cade treatment. I was able to get several rows done on the lace shawl. Then I did a few more rows at the coffee shop, before I pulled out the 2" Weave-it loom and made half a dozen squares. Everyone loved the shawl, and they were also interested in the loom.

I think it's time to crawl in bed and read. Night before last, I finished James Michener's The Fires of Spring. The beginning of it seemed rather Dickensian, perhaps because the main character was growing up in the county poor house where his aunt/guardian was director. This was early twentieth century in eastern Pennsylvania. Having lived in the Philadelphia area for thirty years, the place names were very familiar to me. Last night I started The Scaregoat by Daphne DuMaurier. These are both books that I bought at the Paducah Library's used book sale a few months ago. I have so many books that I haven't read yet that I didn't go to the one they had last weekend.