Four out of five wheels agree

Next week it's bye-bye work-from-home-office and hello dining room. AND I get to move the nice office chair Staples delivered to save my back on week two or three of this adventure,to my personal computer desk for emails, bill-paying and Sims.

The past two weeks when I had some time for my favorite Sim, Portly Chartreuse, or the odd Sim couple of Scary-Hair Tammy and Joe Biden, I felt out of balance. Was it my life-work ratio? Lack of exercise? Unhappy chakras? Nagging knowledge of the not-yet-unloaded dishwasher? Or was my tired old Office Max chair about to throw me to the floor?

Several times I've turned the chair upside down to see if it was the culprit (being the least damning of conclusions).  I couldn't see a problem, so it must be a personal defect.

This evening I rolled the old chair out to the dining room in a switch with the Staples chair. Voila! Four out of five wheels sit on the floor. Rolling the chair around the smooth floor there's always one bucking bronco in the wheel bunch.

Hooray! I'm not unstable and imbalanced! Sure, I could get outside more, eat fruits and veggies, get back on the meditation routine... but mostly it's the chair that's off its rocker.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

To get home eventually

The first traffic jam on my commute after over two months without jams and without traffic  and mostly without commutes was an alternate reality ninety minutes. Nearly all the drivers were staying at safe distances and signalling their need or intention to change lanes. Where was the typical panic to change lanes in any direction? Where were the arrogant pickup drivers plowing to the exit ramp or driving on the shoulder? What had occurred to shut down most of the freeway lanes? I felt an abnormal lack of Need-to-Know.

Every driver save one I observed seemed pretty calm, although that one woman did look harried. How odd to be wondering where she needed to be, who she needed to pick up at an appointed time.  I did not seem to need to be anywhere but where I was. I bet she was finally going to a haircut appointment!

No big lighted signs alerted us to the coming traffic slowdown, or to take alternate routes. I'm still blissfully ignorant of traffic apps or the cause of the shutdown.  Why were there so many white semi-trailers? The cars all seemed to be white or silver. The sky had that late afternoon cloudy gray glare so typical here.

Strange sense of floating for a very long time on a very slow river, probably getting sunburned with my arm roasting on the black inner tube. Tubing on a Texas river of traffic.

My personal inconvenience, my individual delay, my normal aggravation were next to nonexistent. Just floating along. Check my blood pressure. Am I even breathing?

Maybe we could come out of this tragic pandemic with a brief and temporary sense of being part of a grand organism that works together, that allows space between beings,  that breathes in and out. Maybe we will improve our ability to wait, and not take it as a personal affront.


© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Risk assessment haiku with generous tip

Not safe Safe No mask
Mask Cut hair myself Just don't
Salon Sane Not sane

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Harrowing haircuts

... or Fiskars and sickles. We visited Harold Warp's Pioneer Village in Minden, Nebraska a few times as kids, and wandered through the huge shed of farm implements. I was a city kid in a rural state. As a mom I was great with all the types of railroad cars and different trucks, plus the dinosaurs (who mostly have different names now). I even knew my logging and construction vehicles, but I hadsome sort of block with the farm implements. Old McDonald had a tractor, EIEIO, was as far as I went.

Somewhere in my hundreds of untitled, unidentified scan files there's a classic Christmas letter my mom received from her high school friend who stayed on the farm. The friend's husband dropped the harrow on his foot, but his wife could not drive a stick shift. So the farmer had to drive himself to the hospital. When the going gets tough, the tough heave the harrow off their foot and put pedal to the metal.

One of my most vivid memories from teaching summer art programs was the girl who showed up for performance day (in August in Dallas) in her green velvet Christmas dress. She had played connect-the-dots of the mosquito bites on her legs with black Sharpie marker. And she had cut her own hair so it looked a cornfield with rows of stubble, thankfully not when I was handing our the Fiskars scissors. I have been leaning toward the same style. It's so hard to resist the Fiskars when my bangs are in my eyes. 

Thanks, Wikipedia for this image of the agricultural tool.



Brush up on your farm implements here at Toy Tractor Times.

Paintings links to click on while you are NOT cutting your hair:

"Brush Harrow" by Winslow Homer link
"Reaper" by Eastman Johnson link
Van Gogh's "Wheatfield with a Reaper" link
"The Sower" by Jean-Francois Millet for Nebraskans link
"Harvesters" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder link
Thomas Hart Benton's "Ploughing it Under" link

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder