Pit stop heaven

Being kidnapped and taken to Buc-ee's is a Texas thang. Your friends feel sad for you if you have not experienced the roadtrip wonder that is Buc-ee's. So they take you to the nearest one and watch as you go slack-jawed. Welcome to the cult!

Buc-ee's is not a truckstop, nor a convenience store with gas pumps. Buc-ee's  is a Texas phenomenon with World Famous Restrooms.  The restrooms are clean and huge, and the stalls are large enough for a mom and several kids. They are the restrooms you wish for in every airport you've ever had the misfortune to visit.

Except for the Buc-ee's Ugly Christmas Sweater-style t-shirts I wasn't tempted by the branded merchandise. Planning ahead for next year's employee ugly sweater contest didn't seem worth $15.00.

The exciting news for this old litter educator is that Buc-ees and the Texas Department of Transportation have a cross-branded campaign to reduce litter on Texas highways. Don't Mess With Texas with Buc-ee's should be a powerful ad campaign.

My kidnapper and I are old enough to remember entering the gas station to get the key to the Ladies' Restroom out around the back of the Sinclair or Texaco station. Once in Utah the key was not required because the door had fallen off its hinges the last time the restroom was cleaned.

My mom, Fritzi kept a travel notebook in the glovebox. She noted mileage between clean restroom locations along highways AND places t o get a good piece of pie. Fritzi would have been a Buc-ee's cult convert!

On this day in 2010 my sister and I drove our dad from Lincoln, Nebraska's Eastmont Manor to the Life Care Center of Plano, Texas, the most difficult road trip either of us ever undertook. Today's adventure lacked the snow, the dementia, and the Depends, thank heaven.



Bob Daddy-O Wade passed away this week. Thank you, Daddy-O for the inspiration of your giant frog sculptures at Carl's Corner Truck Stop. They set me on a papier mache adventure of great creative joy.

Road trip reminiscence references:

• Stuckeys rhymes with Buc-ee's. A feature of mid-Sixties travel on Interstate 80. 

•  Sapp Bros. "Big Coffee Pot" truckstop west of Omaha.
• Bosselmans in Grand Island, Nebraska.
• Wall Drug in South Dakota.

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Faulty memories

Uncovered the ugly truth of my childhood today. No, not Granddad, although he was a scary character. Not Grandmother's lavender hair. I am talking about those dining room drapes!

This is not the dining room of my memory. Geez! The curtains in this Christmas 1964 photo were sort of yellow-green and a euphemistic "ochre," with black brush strokes on textured off-white. The bamboo blinds above were faded orange-brown with an ever-present dust coating. The glass shelf above the curtains was a head-bump waiting to happen. What color were the walls? For sure the linoleum tile was the black-speckled crumb-concealer, as we had that for a long, long time!

Repressed memories on those self-help cassettes I listened to in the nineties were usually sexual and physical abuse. Melody Beattie and Gerald Jampolsky were healing bigger stuff than bad drapes. But I definitely repressed this aesthetic affront.

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Fifty mile field trip with phonetic spelling

It's getting trickier to see any fields on a drive north in Collin County. In celebration of sunshine after a miserable gray week we went for a little road trip up Texas State Highway 289 aka Preston Road all the way to Celina.  As we drove, we kept saying, "This used to be way out there." It all used to be WAY OUT THERE, but now it's not.

Between the sprung-up subdivisions, the Sinacola and Komatsu heavy equipment scraping away, and restaurants lined up to the horizon, there are a few longhorn cattle. Not sure if the longhorns are there for real, or for faux Western ambiance. I'd just had a dream that I was smoking a Meerschaum pipe while sitting on a buffalo wearing a Disney princess costume, and Monday's sunlight was preternatural. 

*To clarify, I was wearing the Disney princess costume and smoking the pipe. The buffalo was not wearing a costume or smoking. The dress was yellow. I had slept straight through sixteen hours due to a sinus headache, and the dream was extremely vivid.*

Celina, Texas, is a pronunciation problem. According to the Texas Pronunciation Guide, Celina is pronounced suh-LI-nuh. But Salina, Kansas is pronounced sal-eye'-nuh (i.e. singular, with a long I in the second syllable), as distinguished from the city of Salinas CA, which is pronounced sal-ee'-nus (i.e. plural, with a long E in the second syllable). 

If you need to say, "This used to be way out there," it is ðɪs juzd tu bi weɪ aʊt ðɛr. 

Gawking at the subdivisions filled with two-story, tall-roofed houses a song fragment bopped me on the head: 

They're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

Whuh?  Sparing you the googling, the song is "Little Boxes," by Malvina Reynolds, most notably recorded by Pete Seeger, not Burl Ives , Roger Miller, or the Kingston Trio.  The houses sprouting from here to the county line are not cheap ticky tacky, but they do look all the same. For safety sake, we waited to google until after the fifty mile field trip.

And because it all used to be way out there, if you can remember the Viet Nam draft, I recommend Richard Russo's Chances Are....

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Self portrait with headache

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

BIG DANG WASP

One of these days is not like the others, to paraphrase a Sesame Street song. For instance, this afternoon we had a black wasp bigger than a hummingbird flying around the library. It could have been a spy drone for all we knew.

Our library is a gem wrapped in a jewel box, all crevices, cornices, coving, coffered ceilings, tray ceilings with recessed lighting, and assorted architectural doodahs. Much for an espionage wasp to explore. Now that I think about it, the wasp looked a lot like a young Pierce Brosnan.

Just before closing time the wasp took a low and close buzz into the library director's office. Deep in end-of-fiscal-year acrobatics she'd been unaware of our Hymenoptera intruder. Now, under attack, the director blasted out of there, slamming the door, and laughing in gleeful terror. The evil fiend was trapped! Trouble is, when you lock a velociraptor in the kitchen, or a  wasp in your office, your keys, purse,  phone, and ID badge are locked in, too.

What would Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht do in this Worst-Case Scenario? They've been bringing us useful and/or hilarious disaster survival tips for twenty years now. Now when we need it more than ever!

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

The plastic solar lotus Buddha next door

Love my new apartment. Been here a couple months. It has good vibes, maybe because of the guy next door.

My neighbors have a solar-powered LED lighted lotus Buddha figure by their front door. Sadly, the little solar collecting panels have been ripped out of Buddha's knees. I feel compassion for the Buddha, as my knees often feel powerless.

The neighbors with the Buddha hauled a couch to the dumpster. First they tried to get it out the dining room window. Then they took it out the back siding door, over the railing, and all the way around the building. 

One Sunday they loaded up a U-Haul, but they left the Buddha, a floor lamp, a green lawn chair, and a bunch of trash bags out front. Eventually the floor lamp and trash bags disappeared. Management sent workers to install new window blinds, carpet, and paint the place. Peeking in, I could see new black appliances waiting for installation. A van of women came to do a make-ready cleaning. Still Buddha sits out front. 

Since then a college student in a Yogi Bear costume has moved into another apartment. A family has moved out leaving a toy kitchen beside the dumpster. That delighted a crew of barefoot, unsupervised kids for a couple days.

A young woman hospital worker arrives home each morning about the time I'm waking up to do my knee exercises before breakfast. When I head out the door I smile at a woman in an orange sari sitting on the steps leading upstairs. She looks drowsy, but the infant in her lap is bright-eyed and surveying the world.

 

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Social media posts as picture postcards, just faster

Summer reading of the best kind--I got a postcard from my grandson in the mail from Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo. How awesome is that? Personal hand-printed mail that traveled across geographic space over ticking hours and minutes and days to land in my physical mailbox. Woo-hoo! Sting rays and bats and tigers, oh my!

I'm struggling with my lunch break reading of Gretchen McCulloch's consideration of social media linguistics, Because Internet.  I'm intrigued by our turbo-changing informal writing culture. My problem is keeping track of McCulloch's cohorts of internet and social media adopters: Old Internet People, Full Internet People, Semi Internet People, Post Internet People and Pre Internet People. Really, they just need catchier names. The important idea is that we are in an era of unprecedented informal written communication  activity. People who would never have picked up a pen or typed out a memo are communicating by text, tweet, and post. They are creating new ways to add intonation, layers of meaning, emphasis, breath pauses, and speech-mimicking spellings.

McCulloch compares Beatle George Harrison's postcards with brief messages and doodles mailed in the '70s with use of emoticons and emojis today. Brief informal written communication isn't new, but the number of people participating is vastly different. Doodles and tiny faces are just attempts to indicate mood in a tiny box for a message.

Across cohorts and generations we still have some gaps of interpretation and understanding. My "NEW fiction" may just indicate a special library shelving location, while my coworker takes it as a shouted criticism of her shelving efforts.

We may need to identify and acknowledge those internal critics, editors, and even mentors perched on our shoulders with red pens and twinkly star stickers. Who is grading us for spelling, punctuation, legibility, and turning in our work on time? How do we feel about what goes into our Permanent Record? On my shoulders sit toga-clad judges who happen to be my great-aunt Emma and Miss Helen Madsen from seventh grade English class.

I am often guilty of being too flip, too blunt, too esoteric in speech and writing. Social media is a complex Venn diagram of audiences -- those we have in mind when we post, those with access to the post now, those viewing the post in the unknown future, those lacking the Rosetta stone to unlock the meaning.

What about the sensory experience of texting or posting? I don't get the joy of twirling the display rack of color postcards  (5 for $1.00) in the corner of the souvenir shop. Across the generations I DO get the XOXOX hugs and kisses I received from my grandmothers via the U.S. mail.

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Fungus vs. Snickers

How to write an effective request email to Human Resources:

Joanna,

I had a dumb-as-fungus moment this afternoon when I had a craving for a Snickers. The # is missing for that selection in the snack machine, so I punched in the price 1-0-0. Doh! 100 is the # for those icky cinnamon rolls. That cured my whole chocolate craving, but if you have contact with the snack machine vendor I would appreciate having the selection number back. Otherwise, I will surely do the same dumb thing again.

If you like those cinnamon rolls, there’s one on the break room island for you!

Thanks,

N

Getting results!

1. I received an instant reply requesting information about dumb-as-fungusness.

2. The Candyman vendor got an instant request for snack machine repair with forwarded message.

3.  A young friend showed me a fossilized mosasaur jawbone with six teeth he found at the river yesterday, and it looked more appetizing than the petrified cinnamon roll.

4. There's an amazing fungal growth in the lawn across the street that is larger than a pan pizza from Pizza Hut.

5. I first learned the expression "dumb as fungus" when Dave Barry had a syndicated humor column in the Omaha World Herald when Reagan was president. My father preferred "like a rock only dumber" but I have always been partial to fungus.

6. My sister, an extremely successful,highly-regarded music education professional who shall remain nameless confesses she feels a lot of pressure to punch in the numbers and/or letters as soon as the coins go down the chute in the snack machine, resulting in occasional performance anxiety.

7. Would Betsy DeVos recognize a fungus if it jumped up and grabbed her Snickers bar?

8. How do we define intelligence, and what is the sensitive term for "dumb" in a world where the rules are in constant change?

9. Are you as smart as a  slime mold?

10. Who wrote that book about smart tree roots?

11. Do you take it personally when the vending machine spits back your dollar bill? Yes, it's worse than a quarterly performance review.

SING A SONG OF  SYNTAX

DAVE BARRYTHE BALTIMORE SUN

A significant reason why the United States is having trouble competing in the modern industrialized world is that most Americans, through no fault of their own, are, in the words of U.S. Department of Education Secretary Lamar Alexander, "as dumb as fungus."

That is why this newspaper, at great expense and physical risk, is once again presenting "Ask Mr. Language Person," the educational feature that answers common questions about grammar, spelling and punctuality.

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Read it for yourself

So very nice to have an inquisitive and quiet little visitor in the office this Friday afternoon. This jumping spider was exploring the bulletin board behind my computer, checking out my Christmas cards, photos of grandchildren and friends, playing hide-and-seek in my bookmarks, and flashing its green eyes at me. After the bulletin board it moved on to travel the length of the red telephone cord, checked out the desk light, and traversed the top edge of the computer monitor. 

When it hopped down near my empty Solo cup we stared at each other.  "Wouldn't you prefer to be outside?, " I asked by spidey telepathy, and popped the plastic lid over the little guy. 

With the spider safely in the cup and the lid on top, we headed out. But, wait! There on the linoleum  in the next room was another exploring spider the same size. I let my tiny visitor out of the paper cup and the two of them ran off together.

If you are curious, check things out at your local library!

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Chicken house under construction

Scanning, scanning scanning. Another photo album digitized. A grandfather I never knew reduced to pixels in case a future generation might possibly wonder. Adolph Mastalir's chicken house in Pierce, Nebraska under construction, and Adolph with sawhorse and chicken. My dad's writing, "MY DAD Chicken house under construction," makes me a tiny bit weepy.  Enter the Rhode Island Red rooster.



My paternal grandparents, Adolph and Halma Mastalir from the photo album pages.

 

Put a little memorial in your Memorial Day weekend if you are fortunate enough to have time off work.


© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Scanning self-compassion

The person I was 25 years ago went through an outer ring of Hades, and I am cutting her some slack.

Mother's Day is a time to appreciate our moms, and thank the daughters-in-law who are amazing moms for our grandchildren. Today I am also sending a little cosmic white light and pink bubbles to the young woman who raised my three sons to be responsible citizens of the world. She made many mistakes and had some skewed priorities. She let the guys eat way to many yogurt-covered raisins and watch an excessive number of Ninja Turtle cartoons. She did not shield them from current events. She let them wear camouflage and play with toy guns. Worst of all, she didn't keep them up-to-date with dental check-ups.

Today I've scanned another two photo albums and a vacation album from the years of her mismanagement. Some pages bring up pain, and some bring up accusations. Over all, though, I see a mother who needs a big dose of self-compassion.

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Sticking the dismount

It's been five years in this apartment, with plenty of odd experiences dealing with management. This is the first time I ever received a bad report card!

My plants aren't dead, I said. They are just resting up for spring. And the item I'm storing on the porch is the watering can to refresh the not-dead plants.

Between this blemish on my permanent record and my bum knee waking me to the realities of aging, I'm getting the urge to move on down to a ground level apartment.

Seemed like an old-time tv show sketch when three guys in blotchy coveralls started roller-painting the stair rail before I did my creaky descent to leave for work.

Thanks to Hugh "Lumpy" Brannum aka Mr. Green Jeans aka Bainter the Painter.


© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

MRI-induced flashbacks

Howie, who would have turned 95 this week, made me promise I would never let "them" do another MRI on him. His experience with the test in his mid-eighties brought on WWII foxhole flashbacks. My recent readings of Dad's WWII letters gave me greater understanding of this very post-post traumatic stress.

Now I would have an MRI. On my knee. And I have my own anxiety issues. And my high school Health class teacher drilled those flashback warnings into our teen minds.

"Do you have any metal in your eye?," asked the pre-procedure person from the diagnostic center. wwwww. This totally creeped me out, and it was lucky I didn't faint. I have a thing about eyes.

"Do you have any shrapnel in your body?," she asked. "Do you weigh over 150 pounds?," I heard. Well, yes, who doesn't nowadays? "REALLY?"

It seems the pre-procedure person meant 350 pounds (158.7 kilograms).  Okay, not. I will still fit in the foxhole. That's a good personal wellness program goal.

"Are you claustrophobic?," asked the persistent pre-procedure lady. Waaa haaa ha hah! Won't we all just find out!?

If King Tut and Hedy Lamarr had a love child, it would "frequency hop" in an MRI tube. I crossed my arms across my chest holding the crook and flail. Isis, Osiris, meniscus chanted in syncopated rhythm.


© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Tattoo gushing

If you must gush, gush softly.

Standing in a long line to check out at CVS, I could not help overhearing the cashier getting all in a bubbly lather about an admittedly hunky young dude's bicep tattoo. He had you and me sister on his arm. He had Mercator projections on his arm. He had latitude and longitude on his arm.  He had the whole world on his arm.

He also had a Snickers ice cream bar to purchase. The cashier switched from admiring the "very unique" tattoo to recommending her preferred Twix ice cream bars. I had to avert my eyes and cover my ears, while fumbling for my drug store reward keytag in the bottom of my purse. The cashier's nose ring was all a-quiver.

A pirate's life is a wonderful life a-rovin' over the sea. I was glad to purchase my get-well-soon card and leave for the PG-rated parking lot.

Yo-ho-ho and a frozen novelty to go.

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Big black cauldron

There's a new employee noon hour book club starting up. Employees bring a potluck dish using a recipe from a book, fiction or nonfiction. Of course, they are literary lunching on their own time, just want to make that clear.

Thought about participating. I really did. It was a long day, though, and the only two books with recipes at my skill level were from the children's room.

I can throw a rock in a crockpot. Stone Soup remains a classic story of sharing even in this ugly time of the president we do not mention by name.

The first chapter book I ever read that had a recipe at the back was Ian Fleming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Since it is recorded on the library summer reading program log of 1966--which I still have, of course--I know when I read it. My mom wasn't supporting my desire to make Monsieur Bon-Bon's secret fudge, so I flopped on the living room carpet to read about the lost colony of Roanoke.

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Painting my mom

Digitizing my life is an admission that no one will ever be interested in the physical memorabilia I haul around but am not quite able to send to the landfill. Scanning just sends the items to a place where images never get sorted or become searchable.

I'm getting better at letting go,  though, so I did not scan all the Camp Fire Girl certificates in my first scrapbook. Didn't even scan the paper napkins from Sixties wedding receptions--Crys and Jim ; Jan and Bill ; Catherine and Frank. This is sooo healthy!

Mom is a different story. I had to scan Mom, the first portrait I painted from life at my little easel down in the laundry room with Prang watercolors. All the neighbor kids were making pictures of their moms for the big competition at the new Gateway Bank up at Gateway Mall on "O" Street. The competition was called, "My Mom's a Picture."

The neighbor kids made fun of my painting. My "Mom" was not pretty and she did not have glamorous lips. She looked like she was crying because the paint dripped. There was no time to draw a new picture making Mom look more like Disney's Sleeping Beauty. I wrapped Mom in Saran Wrap and glued her to purple construction paper.

The new bank awarded me the big prize of one crisp dollar bill. That was big bucks for an eight year old in 1963, a time when the tooth fairy brought a dime. The money wasn't important. My mother was the whole picture to me.

The jewelry worn by my mom in the painting.

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Lady Godiva and the Coinstar machine

I wish I could say that Lady Godiva was the person tipping a five-gallon Ozarka bottle of coins into the Coinstar change machine at Tom Thumb this evening. It was an impressive feat even for the guy wearing clothes. Not sure how full the bottle was when he started dumping the pennies, but he still had a long way to go when I left the store with the hamburger buns and baby carrots. Ka-chinga-chinga-chinga-chinga.

No, Lady Godiva was the gal running across Knox Street on the Katy Trail as I was leaving work. Don't get confused here. Lady Godiva was never in a remake of "A Star is Born." She rode a horse in the buff to protest taxation, or some such back in the 1300s.

My dear friend Felicia was famous for convincing a college dean to let her portray Godiva and ride a horse around the campus  promoting a Medieval Faire. She had to design sufficiently concealing attire to gain permission while also creating the historically-accurate revealing illusion. Everything required more effort and creativity in the 70s! I miss Felicia so often!

The Ms. Godiva jogging across Knox wore spandex top and bottom all of a pale dusky peach color.  Apparently she could easily purchase this traffic-stopping medieval look at Nordstroms. But WHY?


Really. ...At least in the 70s Godiva was clothed and the streakers were naked. Plus, how much would a five-gallon bottle of pennies weigh?


© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Like desperadoes waiting for a call

  

 


From deep in the tunnel of the dream world the lonesome harmonica sang of rusted rails and tangled barbed wire. And then no more. No thunderstorms, no sleet, no itchy wool blankets. No way to find that abandoned mine.

All quiet except for the school bus huffing at the curb. Awareness dawns slowly. The blues harmonica is my phone. So very far away. Under the bed somehow. Or down some mine shaft. And would it ever offer another mournful morning wake-up so I can pinpoint its whereabouts?

And why-oh-why was I supposed to get up on my day off? To leave for Bolivia with Butch and the Kid? To repent a life of judging people who lose or misplace things? To actually wish Beto O'Rourke would call to ask for money so I can find my phone?

Thanks for visiting this wild west dream of locomotives, gunslingers, and bank robbers with twinkly eyes. And, yes, ranch dressing is always good for dipping cold pizza for breakfast.

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Time-shifters and singing crawdads

If you check out a library book today, it won't be due until Spring. When will Spring walk in and drop your book in the return slot? In a couple weeks, but beware, Spring, in its toga togs,  must pass the Ides of March first to slide any DVDs you have borrowed into the book drop. I bet even Brutus, whom you knew et tu, was sometimes tardy with his graphic novels.

The library will be open two evenings a week beginning this Tuesday. That's one hour sooner than necessary due to Daylight Saving Time. Going to work later on Tuesday adds more time for my annual vehicle inspection which is on some completely altered space-time continuum. I swear I just sat there in that grungy waiting room with its moisture-damaged Field & Stream magazines holding my "new" purse on my lap just a week or so back while my Buick was inspected.

Back behind the curtain with the man to whom you pay no attention, I was shifting time on behalf of the singing crawdads. Delia Owen's book, Where the Crawdads Sing, is in high demand with book club members. Our little library has fifteen patron requests for four copies. Et tu? Are you on queue?

Cue the crawdads!

Crawdad choir director

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

A whole passel of puzzles

Lettuce pause for a moment of self-doubt followed by the Serenity Prayer and a daily dose of gratitude for my sister who mailed me a whole passel of jigsaw puzzles. She mailed them in a Crate & Barrel box.

Q. How many 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles did she send?
A. A whole passel.

Q. How do you spell "passel?"
A. "Passel" is spelled like "tassel," and unlike "hassle." "Passel" is a real word. Thank heaven! I didn't just dream it up. It's right there in the big red dictionary.

Just seeing the box of puzzles unleashed an inner endless-loop of the Andrews Sisters singing "I Love You a Bushel and a Peck."

Q. How much do I love you?
A. A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.

Q. Is a bushel bigger than a passel?
A. That is comparing apples to oranges with a festive sauce of linguistic idiosyncrasy.

Q. At Christmas dinner the cook opined that peeling 6 lbs. didn't make as many mashed potatoes as it used to.
A. Should that be "as much" or "as many?"

It is still a passel of mashed potatoes. A "passel" is a large quantity although etymologically-derived from "parcel." And "to parcel" means to divvy up and dole out fractions of a whole.

Q. When was Bob Dole on the Republican ticket?
A. Let's skip over this part.

Q. Why do we say "part and parcel?"
A. To mean the whole kit and kaboodle. Also, since part and parcel mean the same thing, the expression is for decorative emphasis with all the bells and whistles.

Q. Does everyone know that The Idiot by Elif Batuman is a really dry funny novel about college, language, linguistics, narrative, meaning, constructed worlds, attending foreign films, Dracula, and conflicted romantic relationships?
A. No, but they need to read it.

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Over the edge

There's one piece of the jigsaw edge very nearly fitting perfectly, except not, and it is throwing the whole framework off square. The color matches perfectly. The shape is just a sliver off.

The stand-off between our ridiculous Congress and the asinine President comes down to just one edge piece or one hammer.

Using a  hammer will not solve a jigsaw puzzle. It will just knock pieces off the table. Don't nobody vacuum!!

Young children use a combination of force and insistence on the rightness of their puzzle piecing. I expect a bit more reasoning and careful consideration of the shapes and colors from elected officials. Go stand on the other side of the table, turn on a lamp, or squint for heaven's sake.

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder