School supply envy

Typical. The grand Trunk Project began as an effort to cull, weed, lessen, unload, clear out, deselect, downsize, ship off, digitize, or all of the above, the contents of a decaying old trunk so as not to burden my sons when I am nearer the cul-de-sac on the road of life.



Allegedly, we can discard items that do not "spark joy." Trouble is, most items spark curiosity. I untied the bundle of letters, and opened the envelopes. Next thing I knew the contents of the trunk were fanned out all across the floor demanding to be read, related, curated, contained and preserved for perpetuity.

My father's letters home to his mother during World War II are now encased in seventy dollars worth of archival clear sleeves for 3-ring binder. The zippered giant binder with shoulder strap, accordion file, and zippered pouches was a bargain on clearance, just $10.75. It's not archival, but it is an ode to junior high school supply Spiderman fans everywhere. It is the Peter Parker of nerd notebooks. I should have bought two.

Maybe it's all about junior high school supply envy.

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

Abby Normal

Our favorite yard decorations on the every Sunday morning walking route are these delightful dancing ghosts. The slightest breeze gets them doing a bit of a shimmy. In the early dark of October evenings the ghosts are lit by a long string of lights that form their "arms." It is the ghosts' second year in the neighborhood. My walking buddy and I find they make us ridiculously happy in the era of dismal news, disasters, lies, predators, massacres, and on and on. I don't know if Trump has brought back Christmas as he proclaims, but I am sure glad for Halloween. If I had a yard and a tree, I would sure make some dancing ghosts! Here's how.

When the "Addams Family" television series premiered in 1964, my dear parents, Howie and Fritz, took their big book of New Yorker cartoons off the high shelf and introduced me to the cartoons of Charles Addams, William Steig, Saul Steinberg, Syd Hoff, Peter Arno,  and James Thurber. Dad would patiently explain the historical and political back stories of cartoons I did not understand. I've been hooked on political cartoons ever since. They gave me an insight into history, but also into my parents' takes on the history they had lived through. Later they would introduce me to World War II through Bill Mauldin's cartoons in Up Front.

Saying "Merry Christmas" again.

Instead of cartoons, I've spent the day studying a cookbook! Talk about abnormal behavior! This is one very practical and inspiring cookbook, with great color photos and explanations. Since it is finally cool enough to consider cooking, I am hooked. Look for it at your library, and request it if they don't have it! America's Test Kitchen's One-Pan Wonders may change your life.

And just in case you haven't taken this trip:

Get on the bus, Gus.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Personal hygiene -- Your fronds will appreciate it!

Waiting for the coffee maker, staring out the window at the swim pool while squinting sidelong looks for ants around the kitchen sink, the sturdy middle school guy in the black t-shirt and black shorts is duly noted. Poor kid. He's gonna hit the Coke machine for his breakfast before he gets on the schoolbus. What's wrong with his parents? Why can't they feed him a nutritious bowl of oatmeal or something for the most important meal of the day.

 

Well, yeah, my kids ate a whole lotta Honey Nut Cheerios until they got old enough to appreciate a cuppa coffee before 8:00 class. They knew not to expect meaningful conversation from Mom at that hour. She just had to get their picky-eater lunchboxes packed. Best mornings had bacon and pancakes with Aunt Jemima syrup. I apologize to their teachers for the sugar rushes.

This kid in black out there by the swim pool is not getting a Coke. He keeps pacing around, then trying to relax on a pool lounge chair, then pacing again, looking over the fence to see if the bus is coming. He hollers at kids walking to the bus stop.

Someone throws something over the fence to the sturdy kid. He's looking for some privacy. Geez. Don't let him be shooting up! I don't want to see. I can't stop watching.

The kid in black's climbing between the palm fronds of the swim pool landscape that is intended to make the complex exude exotic luxury vibes. Crap. He's not gonna get undressed, please Jesus! I've seen a lot of things out by the pool from my kitchen window. That bobcat drinking that one time, the annual meeting of the mallard males, kids doing their best to get hit by lightning making me really nervous, a wise shaman barbecuing ribs on the gas grill...

This kid in the fronds, though, is reaching up under his shirt to first one pit, and then the other. He is putting on deodorant. He steps out from the fronds and walks to the fence, tossing the deodorant to someone. He arranges himself, then heads out the pool gate. Maybe he will get to sit by the cute girl with earbuds and violin case.

I think I can I think I can get moving. The coffee is ready. Life is good. My job is not driving a school bus full of sweating hormone-exploding middle school kids on ninety degree days.

Tomorrow the coffee maker will chug and gurgle again. Tonight I stare out the kitchen window at the Coke machine down at the pool. Did the sturdy kid do some homework? Did he have a chance to shower, squirt some Frebreez in his shoes? Will the bus driver be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed pulling up to load the kids Friday morning?


© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Who was...?

Who was...? is the name of a surprisingly popular series of biographies for children. Surprisingly, because adults like them as much as kids, and because the cover illustrations creep me out. They look like Famous Bobble-heads You Should Know, much like the U.S. Presidents who race around the bases at D.C. Nationals baseball games.

Example A:

  

Example B:

Example C:  Who is Jeff Kinney?

Of course Jeff Kinney, from McCook, Nebraska led the 1969 Huskers in rushing, scoring, and receiving as a sophomore. In 1971 "Kinney’s finest game as a Husker may have come against Oklahoma in the “Game of the Century”. Most people remember Johnny Rodgers electrifying 72-yard punt return, but forget that Kinney carried the Huskers offensively. Kinney ran for a season best 171 yards and four touchdowns."

Oh, not that Jeff Kinney? Apparently there's some guy who draws stick figures.

The characters in my current Ancestry.com family tree project are showing up in my dreams with enormous bobble heads. Big heads who drowned in the Allegheny, carpenters who cut themselves at work and died of blood poisoning, a guy who married two sisters, but only one at a time.

What about the family tree bobble-head women? Their strength blows my mind. Their stories will be in a different post, as I've run out of time in my own race around the bases. 

Check out some biographies at your library! It's okay to read the kid ones, they tell you the basics and cut to the chase.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Flora, fauna, and Cheerios in the stroller

Did the first waterlily sunprint this morning. My fascination with waterlilies preceded my awareness of Monet, Claude. In my imagination, my mom Fritzi, Monet, Claude, and I would sit on a stone bench by the lily pond in the Depression era public works Sunken Gardens in Lincoln, Nebraska, munching dry Cheerios and watching dragonflies. Fritzi would have been 88 on her birthday yesterday. Claude died two years before Fritzi was born, but he is still sitting with us in the morning sunshine watching clouds reflected in the lily pond. I'm in the stroller, my Cheerios on its little dashboard tray wearing a little yellow sweater with an appliqued giraffe.

Monet, Claude did not join us those mornings Fritzi and I had Animal Crackers at the old Lincoln Zoo. Sometimes Rousseau, Henri would wander out of the humid zoo stench to distract me while Fritzi cut my fingernails with those roseate spoonbill baby scissors.


© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Generations pancaking

Grimmly I must confess the sources of the family legends, fairy tales, and cautionary case studies are not nearly so far back as I imagined during my last genealogy attack a decade or so ago. Not saying there aren't some cows still grazing on top of the thatched roof, but the fabled characters are catching up with me.

The spoiled rich girl who eloped with the gardener turns out to be just my grandma's grandmother. No pricked fingers on spindles, no spinning straw into gold. Just a long slog having babies from New York to Iowa after a rough boat ride from England.

That wicked stepmother who banished her husband's daughter, my grandma, to Pierce, Nebraska, all the way from Sioux City, Iowa, wasn't really looking in her magic mirror for the fairest one of all. The fox was out on the chilly night when my great grandfather removed himself from the next chapters of the story, leaving his family to sweep the hearth with twig brooms and stitch by firelight.

My ancestors may have been inn-keepers, stable-keepers, or horse thieves. One admits to being in a traveling theatrical troupe.

The legendary "Unknown Liska" who pushed all his worldly possessions from the Ukraine to Bohemia was a refugee from religious and ethnic persecution, trying to find a way to survive like the ones we see on the news every evening. He was lucky if he even had a wheel for his  barrow.  And Russia seemed to be conquering the Crimea, and repressing Ukrainian national identity. It all could have been this week, or last... It wasn't the Dark Ages. (James Monroe was the U.S. President at the time.)  Upon arrival the refugees hoed sorry plots of depressing root vegetables, fermented and pickled and canned.

The loaf in the breadbox will be fine for your lunch sandwich tomorrow, but then overnight it's covered with fuzzy blue-green mold. How many youngest sons set off with just a chunk of day-old bread, a lump of cheese in a canvas bag and the best wishes of their poor single mother? They needed to meet smarty-boots cats, outwit foxy loxies, and spin stories to win the hand of the princess. Some even had to balance a pancake on edge and send it rolling up and down the hill...

Journey Cake, Ho! by Ruth Sawyer and Robert McCloskey

If we can't keep the stories going we are just a sorry bunch of whiny bratwursts. If we can't learn from history, we deserve the tyrant we get. Maybe what this country needs is more folktales told by wise grandmas with chin  whiskers.

A Treeful of Pigs, by Arnold and Anita Lobel

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Overdue with shoes

Put the new designer shoe department in the fiction room, the nonfiction room by the fireplace, or upstairs in the periodicals room? Display artists ready to arrange spike heels on little gilded tables and atop the marble circulation desk. . . . .

They were going to overdo

overdo overdo

overdues overdues overdues

chug chug choo choo CHOO CHOO lotsa shoes lotsa shoes fancy shoes get the shoes lotsa shoes!

Jimmy Choo Jimmy Choo Jimmy Choo Whoo oo whoo! Whoo oo whoo!

I think I can I think I can I think I can I think I can I think I can get out of bed to

Hit the snooze hit the snooze hit the snooze hit the snooze hit the snooze hit the snooze

Gotta get
gotta get
gotta get
gotta get

wedding shoes
wedding shoes

Don't overdo

don't
overdo 



don't
over
do


No hat

no

HAT

No haaaattTT!

But you gotta know the territory!


OVERDUE OVERDUE Overdue Overdue

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Trending

My generalized tendency is to become a tad more introverted and irritable each day of the week ending in the letter y. Today my annoyance is following the flow toward all things "trending".

The big red dictionary gives two interesting examples:

"A noticeable trend away from narrow "laws of learning'": (Gertrude Hildreth)

"The prevailing wind trends east-northeast."

"I made a big crockpot full and the leftovers are inescapable."

So, yes, society keeps sending us with the same unacceptable presidential candidates, poorly behaved professional athletes, exotic illnesses, uncomfortable shoes, sinus headaches, ineffective educational testing, and historic weather histrionics in our sack lunches everyday along with the BBQ chicken sandwiches. The leftover chicken sandwiches are the best in the lot, and a couple dill pickle slices help.

We don't need to figure out which way the wind is blowing to know what's going on. Everywhere we turn we are bombarded with what's "trending" until we have no will left to fight against the gale. The commentators prattle on with all the insight of Rosencrantz and Guidenstern:

ROS: I merely suggest that the position of the sun, if it is out, would give you a rough idea of the time; alternatively, the clock, if it is going, would give you a rough idea of the position of the sun. I forget which you're trying to establish.
GUIL: I'm trying to establish the direction of the wind.
ROS: There isn't any wind. Draught, yes.
GUIL: In that case, the origin. Trace it to its source and it might give us a rough idea of the way we came in – which might give us a rough idea of south, for further reference. (2.52-55 Stoppard)

The figurative sense of 'the way the wind blows', that is, meaning the tide of opinion, was in use by the early 19th century. In November 1819, The Times published an advert for a forthcoming book - The Political House that Jack Built, which was said to be "A straw - thrown up to show which way the wind blows".

Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, 1965, encouraged the young to make their own decisions with the lines:

You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows

Once I finish digging out the information about the "Tri-Trend" house where I grew up, I plan to go back to watching Audrey Hepburn movies. There are many, and I've only just started!

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Ant anxiety disorder

Panic self-assessment levels are high. I'm having horrible nightmares set in Sixties suburbia with walkout basements, feelings of hopelessness and paralysis, loss of appetite, blurred vision, and inability to solve Sunday New York Times crossword puzzles. I even had a flashback to junior high English class with Miss Madsen. I'm losing my grip on Greek root words and confusing etymology with entomology!



This is the first time I've ever had a kitchen ant invasion in my whole grown-up life. When I had the maintenance guy fixed the screen on the kitchen window so I could open it once in awhile, somehow he provoked the ants. It's not my fault!!! Why do they hate me???


The ants started doodling around on the windowsill carrying teeny banners. I can't read the banners without a magnifying glass. [Yes, the ants are real.]

The ants mostly stay on the windowsill, but this is absolutely unacceptable. When my Grandma Halma had ants in her kitchen, she was put in The Manor. The ants were marching to and from a congealed OJ spill on her counter. I don't want to be in The Manor quite yet. They serve icky canned mixed vegetables at The Manor.

Terro Liquid Ant Killer's package says proper use may take up to two weeks for complete ant control. An all-out cleaning attack on my kitchen has not turned back the tide.

Resist! Resist! Is that what the banners proclaim? The package instructions tell me, "Resist the temptation to interfere when the ants come in droves--your patience will pay off as you watch your ant infestation dwindle and then disappear." I'm starting to hear voices! Resist the temptation! Don't interfere with the droves!


And forgetting that ants were called emmets is messing with my crossword performance level...


© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Going to Tom Thumb with your inner artists

Walk through the automatic doors. You have a list. You have a vision. Your selections will weave, wave, fold into detailed entrees, casseroles, and lunchbox leftovers for the week ahead. Fish transform into swans. Tiny Lego figures climb infinite staircases to unload your dishwasher.

Shamble through the automatic doors. Go back and get a cart. Load up with containers of hummus, pimento cheese spread, mint chocolate chip, Greek yogurt, a Rubbermaid spatula, and a can of pink cake frosting. Grab a roll of masking tape in the checkout lane.

Take a plastic shopping basket. Peer through jars of jams and roasted red peppers. Pick up saran wrap and foil. Linger in the candy aisle.

Run in.Grab a loaf of French bread, an economy block of Swiss, five pounds of potatoes, and box of Bandaids.

Stride through the automatic doors. Go straight for the Cheez-Whiz. Reddi Whip, Barbasol, and gogurt. Find Silly String in the birthday party section.

Where is that robust Dutch artist? The bearded guy with the table of pears, beef roasts, sardines, tulips, onions, edam wheels, tall mugs of hoppy beverages, and grapes of every color hanging over the edge in the dimly lit hall, you know him. Where is his hefty debit card?

What was it I came in here to get?


© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Shelf shifting, continental drifting

Work-out #1

Two days, two work-outs.What does peckish mean?  This English word meaning hungry dates from 1785 "literally disposed to peck". Other slang meanings dating from 1902 are outside the scope of this post.

My mission was to shift the periodical shelves down to get more magazines into the reach of more users, and to cull back issues so they would fit in the reduced spaces. For eight of the nine sections of the shelves this was a simple task. Count the holes. Position the brackets. Slide the wooden shelves onto the brackets. The wooden shelves were not light, though, especially not the front display shelves. Lifting stacks of back issues was a pretty good work-out by itself.

But for one section of shelves this was a woodpecker-drilled nightmare. Perhaps the section was installed upside-down. The bracket holes did not line up with the other sections vertically. So someone, probably a woodpecker, drilled many more holes. These holes were spaced too far apart front-to-back. The brackets were not long enough. The installer must have been the poster child for Measure Twice, Cut Once.

Woodpecker work

I had to look up peckish again. It never seems to fit its meaning when I see it in a book.

Work-out #2

Craving autumnal food despite the temps in the low nineties, I had an attack of recipe posting on Pinterest, then wrote a very long grocery list based on the recipes. Never mind my failure to ever actually follow recipes.Then I went digging for quarters to use at the car wash.

After the wash, the grocery list was nowhere to be found. I would just have to shop by memory! The answer sheet for this test was probably on the kitchen table.

garlic fail sweet potato pass chicken broth pass ginger thought better butternut squash pass can of chickpeas reassessed Greek yogurt pass fruit for smoothies pass zucchini pass couscous pass tomato paste pass canned tomatoes pass fresh mint fail fresh sage partial credit for a jar of dry sage potatoes pass lemon pass parmesan pass rice vinegar pass bread pass eggs fail fail milk fail butter fail sparkling grapefruit soda partial credit birthday card partial credit gift card short ribs fail partial credit for getting close pork roast partial credit pie crusts partial credit for a bargain chicken thighs fail bratwurst fail turnip fail breast cancer donation fail yellow squash

The real work-out will be convincing myself I want those breakfast fruit smoothies.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Snaps crackle at staff meetings

My turn to lead the biweekly staff meeting is not as demanding as, say, being the leader of the Free World, but it does cause anticipation anxiety. I try to not hyperventilate or lock my knees, but I sure would like to fake having a nosebleed and go hide in the restroom. Hey, it worked in high school Spanish class!

Our agenda template includes a prohibition against Rabbit Trails. Being fond of rabbits and their calming presence in the preschool classroom, I think introducing rabbits into the office environment might be an improvement.

The most confounding part of the agenda is Snaps. We go around the conference table announcing we "have Snaps" for our coworkers who have accomplished amazing acts of heroism or just held the door for us when we entered the building. What are Snaps? Why do we have Snaps for _your name here    instead of giving Snaps to _your name here?

Although it is still early in the agenda, I get distracted. The Addams Family song plays in my ear. Sadly, this will be the last staff meeting with our water educator, Pugsley.

But what about ginger snaps dunked in hot black coffee? Or Rice Krispies?


And from that happy thought, I boomerang to bra straps in junior high school. Boys would walk up behind young ladies and pull bra straps out to snap back against backs or shoulders, through clothing, of course. This sort of tween harassment was considered perfectly normal behavior of boys-will-be-boys. To have your bra strap snapped in the late Sixties was less humiliating than not having a bra strap to snap. Either way, this obnoxious behavior was just something girls should accept. Huh???

• Maybe SNAP is a management acronym. Acronym meanings for SNAP make a long, long, unmanageable list. 

• The library has a new book, Snap strategies for couples: 40 fast fixes for everyday relationship pitfalls, by Dr. Pepper Schwartz. It sounds like quick casserole recipes!

• What are the rules of Snap? Kiddie card games were popular birthday gifts and favors in the Sixties. Snap showed up in packages with Animal Rummy, Go Fish, Hearts, Authors, Old Maid and Crazy Eights.

Before I get my sled runners back in the groove, I must mention the strange Scandinavian children's books starring the triplet boys, Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr.

 

Corresponding blonde girl triplets in the book series, Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka, might have belonged to a sorority where applause was too loud and disruptive, and so they invented "Snaps" for meetings.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

"We are living in fraught times."

fraught 

I was going to offer a clichéd description of the times and the maps drawn by small boys this week after our nature walk. Indeed, I walked perilously close to the precipitous edge of a pregnant pause or a anxiety-laden moment. I was already feeling purdy darn fraught because the one time I put my lesson in a Power Point, the computer was completely disconnected from its tangle of necessary wires.

"We won't go that way," I said and pointed, "because it's full of poison ivy." Three-fourths of the group followed my finger instead of following me away from the danger. 

It went better today when I said we might encounter Capital D danger. "Do you think it will be sharks?," I asked. "Or maybe alligators?" They all followed me in high hopes of meeting both.

A five year old boy's yellow brick road goes past Rattlesnake River and Shark Lake among other pitfalls. He was delighted with it. I like the way all the obstacles are off to one side like cul-de-sacs while the path goes directly from start to finish. Contrast this five year old girl's map of "Everywhere We Went This Morning". Her younger brother thought snapping turtles were soccer ball turtles, but his main drawing was an enormous fire ant mound:

A tiny girl worked very hard on her map, while a boy walked all the way around the lake.

One mom's eyes lit up when I told about taking dictation while the child drew a map. Her son liked the tic tac toe stump the best on the hike, and I won a convert!

And one person besides me got a little bit teary when I told about my father's map of his hometown drawn when he was sliding slowly into dementia. Some things are way more frightening than fire ants or sharks, but our brains are wired for mapping.

Funny on the day we were making wild green games with orange stickers this gift arrived to connect everything!

 

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder