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

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

Ladling oatmeal with millennials

Let's learn about work with Weekly Reader!

Punch in: To check in formally at a job upon arrival.
Punch out: To check out formally at a job upon departure.


Hold the fort: To take responsibility for a situation while another person is temporarily absent.
All hands on deck:  
A call for all members of a ship's crew to come to the deck, usually in a time of crisis. By extension, everyone 
available to help with a problem, or a call for those people to help. 

 The mail must go through.

Work your fingers to the bone: Boney fingers 
 Your job may be crucial for the greater good: Keep the ships from crashing on the rocks no matter how small you are.
Ladle that cream of wheat through holidays and blizzards: Sick people need to eat, and so do the folks taking care of them.

Find your own sub: You are responsible for covering the time and the work you are assigned whether or not working is convenient.

The show must go on: Regardless of what happens, whatever show has been planned still has to be staged for the waiting patrons.

Just a tiny cog in a big machine: You probably aren't as important as you imagine.







Another day older and deeper in debt: Tennesse Ernie & ZZ Top.

Perpetual tardiness is arrogance: It’s simply that some people no longer even pretend that they think your time is as important as theirs. And technology makes it worse. It seems texting or emailing that you are late somehow means you are no longer late. Rubbish. You are rude. And inconsiderate.

Let's just get it out there: Working with millennials is not always a picnic in the park. I birthed and raise three of them, but most of the others are from another galaxy. Even so, many are amazingly committed to causes and passions, an inspiration to older coworkers, and a bonus to any team. Except when one wants to boot them off the island... Kids These Days gave me valuable new and often infuriating insight into how we created the Millenials and the economic situations they face.

Bring out the hammock:  You didn't just imagine it. Our weekends have lost the restoring, relaxing powers we desperately need.

Much has been written about Hillbilly Elegy and The Glass Castle. Jeannette Walls' book is the more powerful to my mind, bringing out so many choices we make about work, callings, parenthood, and personal responsibility. Do any of our choices make more sense, and why?

    
    

David Brown's memoir is a powerful description of police work, but also a celebration of vocation, meaning and purpose in one's life work.

The Promised Land of Error is a reminder that for much of mankind's existence work took up less of each day than it does in this time of labor-saving devices and technology.

And now this Christmas evening I will hang it up without ranting about earbuds on the job. Be present.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday...

Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders. Actually, it was the Friday before last.

In this endless summer/nonexistent winter the groundhog will emerge tomorrow to open the windows and turn on the ceiling fans. With its big teeth it will snarl, "Don't make me turn on the air conditioner!"

Time perception is my current preoccupation, following size and number considerations. Been listening to Krys Boyd's "Think" interview with Alan Burdick, author of Why Time Flies. It's a pleasant way to spend time compared to the time I spent waiting for IT to fix my time-saving computer earlier today. Was that really just today?

The past two weeks have been one really long scream preceded by, okay, a couple months of severe numbness and shock. The doctor would ask, "When did you begin experiencing this pervasive sense of doom? Why do you say it is getting worse? " Alas, I only have anecdotes, no contemporaneous records using a standard angst-o-meter.

How long is the interval:

• Between landing and actually exiting the airplane?
• Between paychecks?
• Between haircuts?

Arrange on a continuum by length:

• Webinar from one to two-thirty
• The first snow day off school in a blizzard
• The third consecutive snow day

As a child I loved feeding nickels and dimes into parking meters on the streets of downtown Lincoln. An hour was ten cents if I recall correctly. What a concept! I was buying time with coins. My parents approved this childish diversion, as it didn't involve gumballs or pony rides at Hinky Dinky. It should come as no surprise that You Tube is full of people who collect and refurbish vintage parking meters, possibly even the very parking meters decapitated by Paul Newman at the beginning of "Cool Hand Luke."


But what about "buying time," that present participle of the third-person singular simple present?

• (idiomatic) Purposefully cause a delay to something, in order to achieve something else. We need you to buy us some time, so distract the security guard for a few minutes. SEE Supreme Court nominations.
• Increase the time available for a specific purpose.  Renting an apartment buys them time to look around for a new house in Charlotte. 

Although we no longer appreciate, respect, or need experts, this timely news is in from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists who have been tending the Doomsday Clock for seventy years now:

It's 2 1/2 minutes till midnight.

"The board’s decision to move  the 

clock less than a full minute reflects

 a simple  reality: As this statement

 is issued, Donald Trump has been the

US president only a matter of days."

(1/27/2017)

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Prison windows

"The Alcatraz of Italy" prison was the first stop on our boat tour around Asinara Island. Used for centuries as a agricultural penal colony, leper quarantine hospital, and high security prison for mafia bosses, this prison was vacated in 1998. Areas of the prison for regular security, high security, and maximum security bunkers translated as "soft arms," "hard arms," and "bunker".

Where does the word "bunker" originate? Thanks, Online Etymology Dictionary:

1758, originally Scottish, "seat, bench," of uncertain origin, possibly a variant of banker "bench" (1670s); possibly from a Scandinavian source (compare Old Swedish bunke "boards used to protect the cargo of a ship"). Of golf courses, first recorded 1824, from extended sense "earthen seat" (1805); meaning "dug-out fortification" probably is from WWI.

The imprisoned mafia bosses didn't get to do much besides sit 23.75 hours/day in their bunkers under constant surveillance. On the way to Stintino we drove by old military bunkers, too, but no golfing.

Where prisoner sits for short monthly visit with family.

Exiting Samuel Beckett exhibit "Invisible Prison".

Isolation of Isola de Asinara.

Lizard's blue tummy spots match the sky.

The island is on the tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage Site designation. And yes, I woke up at four a.m. again.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Able to leap tall buildings

Gothic-Catalan bell tower of Cattedrale Santa Maria

This little early bird climbed stairs to the terrace top of Torre de San Giovanni in honor of my muse who loves tall buildings. Huffing and puffing, I was grateful it was a short tall building.

On the way up I caught my breath at the large model of Alghero circa 1865, and remembered how my three little sons had loved the model of the Alamo way more than the actual Alamo.

Persevering, I gracelessly ascended the uneven stone stairway with no handrail to emerge into the sunshine.

Dome of Chiesa San Michele

Fort Magdelena with port in background

Bell towers of San Francesco and Santa Maria

One of several towers

Via Sassari and the park

Looking toward Lido beach

And closer, old city streets and rooftop spots:

No, it wasn't nap time when I got back to ground level.



© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Manet at a loss with albatross

June is almost half over, and not going fast enough. The page on my Cornell bird calendar is giving me such weird vibes! Since I received two copies of the catalog one hangs to the right of my home computer, and the other to the right of my office screen. Seen from the corner of my eye, the image sparks elusive Rorschach images on my mind's eye. They are gone before I can catch them.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Vacuuming up the stages of grief

Got the bad news yesterday. My "new" vacuum is beyond repair. The fix-it guy I've relied on broke the news.

My "new" Sanitaire vacuum had many tune-ups and refurbishings over the twenty-some years of it's life, and now it is taken from me too soon, too soon. Lately it spent most of its time alone in a dark closet, but it reminded me of the times when it gobbled up Legos and MicroMachines, then gagged on sweatsocks. It had outlived five crockpots and too many coffee makers to count.

At times misty-eyed, and other moments angry that Fix-It Steve had given up on my long-time servant, I got through the day in a sour mood. It was worse once I got home and sat staring at the white felt clippings from the snowflake project all over the carpet. There's a whole pack of vacuum bags in the closet...

What would a new vacuum cost? The old "new" one had been about $250.00 in 1990's dollars. Maybe I should just limp along with a DustBuster. No, that's pathetic! Snap out of it!

...best... vacuum ... apartment ...images ... Google popped up photos that looked like my grandson's toy vacuum with the colored beads popping around in the clear tube. Whoa! That's what vacuums look like now! I had no idea.They are lightweight, bagless, and affordable. Cool! And the instant gratification of seeing the gross stuff coming out of the carpet is motivating. Merry cleaning to me, and to all a good year!




© 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

Lightning vs. Umbrellas

I'm traveling light this week, but not the in the manner of my amazing, determined friend who got back to her high school size 6 for the fifty-fifth class reunion. Big clouds of mental fretting have lifted because the educator workshop I'm sponsoring has filled. I don't have to present anything, but I do get to show off our outdoor "classroom" in the midst of the Monarch butterfly migration through the Metroplex to fifty early childhood and nature educators.

Any trip when I am only responsible for myself is still a gentle breeze lifting and swaying me through Terminals A and C. I've either packed wisely or not, and it just doesn't matter much as long as I remembered my meds and comfortable shoes. I'm not carrying travel guides, field guides, atlas or dictionary. There's an adorable child at the destination, but I don't have to do the logistics of diapers, car seats, asthma inhalers, or entertain kiddies en route. Life is light.

Got some library ebooks onto my Kindle, but don't ask me how! I forgot to roll Ariadne's thread through the labyrinth. As for my overdue library books and videos, I don't think I'll swing by the bookdrop at 4:45 a.m.



________________________________

Ed. NOTE:

On the rare occasion when actual statistics are required, the little metric devils are elusive. For my upcoming family program about weather I wanted to say kids are way more likely to poke their eye out with a toy umbrella than to be struck by lightning. Not quite as likely as presenting at the emergency room with a fish hook through their eyebrow or earlobe, but it's still a big risk...not to mention the unnecessary burden on school staff when a kiddie brings a bumbershoot to preschool. Actually, statistics fail to show that kids are way more likely to poke out their little brother's eye with a rainbow sparkle Frozen trademark tie-in umbrella, but I'm pretty sure that's true. May Zeus strike me with his thunderbolts if it ain't! [No graphs were found comparing sibling umbrella eye injuries to plastic toy guitar injuries imitating Hanna-Barbera cartoons.]


There's all this talk in the media about banning people from carrying knives and guns and yet it appears perfectly legal to carry one of the most dangerous weapons imaginable. I refer of course to the umbrella.

Over the course of a 5 minute walk from the station to _____ today (in Leeds) I narrowly escaped having my eyes poked out on no fewer than 8 occasions; each time it was some clueless woman (and it always seems to be women) with a complete lack of awareness of anyone walking near her. You also run the risk of whiplash from ducking out of the way to avoid them, and you daren't say anything to anyone cause they could potentially take their umbrella down and stab you with it.

What on earth is so bad about getting wet anyway? It wakes you up, makes you feel more alive and, if you work or shop down the markets it's the nearest thing you'll get to a wash all year!

So let's ban umbrellas and create a safer and fresher society for all!


© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Windshield wipers for googly eyes

"What do you know about emotional intelligence?," the trainer asked us bright and early. 153 probably wasn't the answer she was trawling for, but it's pretty close to the Dewey decimal shelf location for Daniel Goleman's book, Emotional Intelligence. Stephen Covey is upstairs too, just a few library shelves over at 158.

"Would you eat anything with eyes?," a coworker asked. I had a flashback to rainbow trout dinners in Estes Park. No, I would not eat the eyes, but grilled trout was served with the head as proof of freshness. And grilled rainbow trout with a loaded baked potato is very fine dining.

So, while setting out the brunchy-munchy emotional food for the team-building session the devil made me set a few googly eyes on the apples, strawberries, and cheese cubes. It was not my intent to cause a coworker to choke to death on a googly eye, but I could put that into my never-to-be written mystery, first in a compelling new series, as we say in the book review biz. I was expecting a different coworker to have a severe reaction to the non-GMO crunchy peanut butter on the apple slices, and maybe swell up like a Macy's parade balloon before suffocating.

Forgot to factor my unfamiliarity with the venue kitchenette when planning these Deaths by Departmental Meetings. My fiction is no pulp, like the OJ.

Thirteen hours of survey data, strategic planning, goals and objectives, signage text, visions and mission statements, personal strength and weaknesses, drought-tolerant landscape design, and an emotional intelligence trainer using her index fingers to be pretend teeny windshield wipers in front of her eyes could drive a usually sane person to open the Hatch.

So thank heaven for those Hatch chile cheddar cheese cubes from Market Street, and for the coworker who knew where the coffee was stored--right next to the bodies in the freezer!

Okay, no bodies. No apple corer/divider in the kitchenette drawer, either.

Just balloons and funnels drawn on the white board with scented markers. The balloons were the emotional (big and stretchy) and rational (little and rigid) containers in our brains reached by stimuli that have made it through our funnels and filters.

What behavior change or action did I take following the emotional intelligence team-building training session? I went right home and filed an apartment maintenance request for a change of furnace filter. The super installed a new thermostat, but left the dirty filter in place.

That's okay, because I can use my index fingers like teeny windshield wipers to clean dirty stimuli filters. I can reset my new emotional thermostat.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

First job/Worst job

Broke the ice sharing our childhood hobbies, first jobs, and worst jobs at the first early morning meeting in a week of meetings.  Nobody on staff was a tv child star. No one admitted to collecting chicken drumsticks in their sock drawer. Instead we collected rocks, Beanie Babies, elephant and frog figurines, stickers, and erasers. We chased butterflies with big nets, read a lot, and played outside in playhouses. We liked hiding more than seeking.

What captured moment from your skewed memory of childhood do you share with the kind, good, bright people in your office in 30-45 seconds to explain or excuse who you are and have always been? Memories bubbled up of hiding behind the Christmas tree watching the lights and shadows on the ceiling, of reading archaeology tales in the treehouse, of sorting the smooth rocks from the tumbler, or drawing floorplans on graph paper tablets, and writing letters, always writing letters.

Every Christmas we kids each received a package of 12 x 18 inch colored construction paper. I looked forward to this all year. I had to plan, organize, and budget the colored sheets in those three packages for myself and my two siblings to allocate the appropriate colors for every holiday in the year ahead. That way we would still have red sheets to make the placemats for our family's Christmas Eve supper. Red has so many demands upon it, what with Valentines and Fourth of July. It takes discipline and creativity to use a limited resource wisely. What are the other Valentine options? Will we regret at Easter using all the pink in February? And what about Cornhusker football games against those Sooners at Thanksgiving? Go Big Red! I believe my siblings were willing participants in this holiday creativity, but you'll have to ask them after their therapy sessions.

Staff members' descriptions of worst jobs involved being frightened, sticky, bored, isolated, or silent. This group is obviously not afraid to find out how the sausage is made or the recyclables sorted. We have dug plumbing trenches, babysat toddlers, played bluegrass gospel music, packaged cinnamon rolls, and felt demeaned by micro-managers.

When did my coworkers begin working? We took jobs playing music, babysitting, waiting tables, cleaning houses, slinging oatmeal, organizing start-ups, working Black Friday mall retail, and managing bridal registries before we were out of our teens. Sharing these stories created a surprising bond.

We need to share these stories with coworkers and with the generations of family gathered around the holiday tables decorated with kid-created placemats. Understanding the work we each do builds respect. Respect builds community, cooperation, and collaboration.

Don't use all the orange at Halloween, because you will need some at Thanksgiving.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder