Scrabble eggs and bacon

The second grader held the plastic fork in front of his eye and squinted. His teacher suggested he wouldn't want to poke his eye out, and moved the fork away. The little boy held the fork back up to his eye. This time the teacher asked why. "I'm putting her in jail," he said, pointing at the little girl sitting on the other side of the cafeteria table.

Is that brilliant?! So very useful in these trying times.  I've been practicing for the next time I watch the news.

It would not work with a spork, the utensil of my sons' school lunch years. Glad kids get knife, fork, and spoon nowadays.

And speaking of sporks, a deceptively brilliant coworker complemented my new coffee cup while we were not riding in the elevator. "There's a name for that thing," he said. "Huh?," I said. "That thing around the cup," he said, "There's a name for it." Then he pushed the floor button, and the elevator was not as slow as it seemed.

As soon as he could look it up, he reported back. "Zarf. It's a zarf." "Is that like a spork, like a scarf for .......   for coffee?," I asked. He was smart enough to push the elevator button, but did not know the word origin.

Apparently zarfs are a thing, and way beyond Starbucks. Without knowing their name, I spotted some in an easy-to-knit book. The word is Turkish or Arabic dating from 1836 and meaning "vessel", and it's worth a lot of points in Scrabble. True, you would think many of the folks you see on the news would be in hot water. The idiom "to be hot water" may or may not date from the Middle Ages and trial by ordeal. We can be sure that watching the news is an ordeal.

Percolation palpitations

Ruth Ware's  The Woman in Cabin 10  is dredging physical memories of anxiety episodes twenty years past. Probably not the safest audiobook for my long commutes! Factor in the realization I forgot to turn off Mr. Coffee before my drive, and just blast me on-beyond-caffeine back to the panic planet.

How astonishing it is that our brains can connect squiggly black marks on a page or the syllables of a storyteller to personal memories of actual physical experiences deep in our past! Brain imaging would show an aurora borealis lighting up in our heads. And yes, "Aurora" is the name of the luxurious ship in Scandinavian waters in Ware's novel. Unfortunately that same astonishing brain can't remember to turn off the coffee maker.

The neglected old Mr. Coffee did not burn down the apartment building, but I'm not going to push my luck. That small appliance has the certain smell of doom. I need a coffee maker with an automatic shut-off.

...So the new miniature Brew&Go only makes enough coffee for one travel mug then turns off. I get a full sensory memory of every time I've made a tiny carafe of coffee in a hotel room without that twinge of concern about my memory halfway to work.

© 2013-2016 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

The House At the Edge of Night

I have traveled so little, but I know we bring to to each new place and experience a brain desperately trying to make connections and draw parallels with previously visited places, to pull stories, histories, mental images, and other stimuli from the deep stacks and vertical files. Indeed, I think our brains are a bit like tiny shushing librarians in sensible shoes racing to be more spot on than Google. At the end of the day their support stockings sag, but they have won.

And so, in Sardinia images of scruffy New Mexico landscapes, Puccini opera stage sets, magical realism with/without cholera, Great War-era genealogical trees, watercolor mixing lectures, and Escher dorm room posters flooded my dreams and daytime musings. 

These three tiny clay houses smaller than my thumb are my main souvenir. They represent Alghero, but also remind me of the Alexander Girard arrangements of miniature villages and processions at the International Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe. I hear the church bells and shepherd's song at the beginning of Tosca Act III, see the fortress in Carmen. 

Listening to the audiobook of Catherine Banner's House at the Edge of Night was a perfect appetizer for my trip. I highly recommend this family saga set on a fictional island near Sicily if you are traveling or just taking your inner librarian on a much-deserved cruise.

War memorial in Stintino

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Fibonacci gets two fillings

Women with power tools and heavy equipment should wear hard hats. The assistant wielded the oral shop vac near my palate, and placed blocks between my jaws way back by my "hangy-down-thang".

Not that I have dental procedure anxiety disorder. It's more of a fear of gagging all over the dental staff. The dentist herself was treading like a military mine removal specialist.

For the first hour or so I wondered just what was the engineering/construction term for those boxy things sitting near road construction sites looking like tipped over coffee tables from an ancient giant race of gods. You've seen them, but you might not have really noticed since you didn't have blocks the size of Stonehenge boulders in your mouth when you drove by. My anxiety about gagging was being replaced by engineering vocabulary panic.  My dad would be so disappointed. Dad taught me to solve square roots to make road trips go faster.

Second hour it was obviously time for a different distraction technique. Though seriously numbed and blubbery, anxiety was still lurking in my fuzzy brain. And that's when Fibonacci came to the rescue. Zero + 1 is 1. 1 + 1 is 2. 1+2 is 3. 2+3 is 5. 3+5 is 8. 5+8 is 13. 8+13 is 21. 13+21 is 34. 21+34 is 55. 34+55 is 89.  It was getting increasingly difficult to hold onto the thought, but the second dental filling seemed to be going much faster than the first. 55+89  is  is   is, hmmm. Or was it 54? I would have to start over. This is pathetic. This is a gross, 144.  Prime numbers were starting to holler in tiny munchkin voices back behind my ears. The munchkins were wearing sparkly magenta hard hats and safety vests.

"Trench box," cried the munchkins, "shoring box." 144 + 89 was interrupted. "Tap, tap, tap," said the dentist munchkin ... "Grind, grind, side to side." "$194," said the front desk woman.


© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Ice-breaker at Tone Deaf Anonymous

Yesterday I hosted another educator workshop. Hosting is easy compared to presenting the program. I bring the mini muffins and seedless grapes, and make the first pot of coffee.

[Hint #1--If you make the coffee too strong or too weak, workshop participants will ask if they can make the next pot.]

We opened the workshop with a fiendishly difficult ice-breaker. Each participant had drawn the name of a very familiar song from a bag. We were to walk around the room humming our song until we found all the other folks humming the same song.

Each new hummer I met completely knocked my tune out of my head. I was struggling to hang onto Jingle Bells, and to sort it out from Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle, Row Row Row Your Boat, London Bridge, and Mary Had a Little Lamb. When I finally found a young park ranger struggling with jingling all the way, we almost hugged in relief!

Early childhood curriculum guides are full of ideas like, "Sing this rhyme about tying shoes to the tune of I've Been Working On the Railroad," or "Use the tune of Frere Jacques for this little ditty about washing your hands after you flush." Remember, deer need food, water, shelter, and space. And there's a reason why we all aren't improv jazz musicians.

Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous, Rudolph? 

  



© 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

Brunch for six at noon

Wake up and smell the espresso. It's 11:11 a.m. EDT, for heaven sakes! The Mother's Day menu:

Cultural outing to follow:

The Phillips Collection

Man Ray - Human Equations: A Journey from Mathematics to Shakespeare

Hiroshi Sugimoto - Conceptual Forms and Mathematical Models

Delightful paintings by children including a portrait of a pig

Highlights from the Permanent Collection 

Seeing well-behaved families honoring their mothers with a trip to the art museum gave me great joy. I especially loved the young family all in their dress-up Sunday School clothes, the mom with a purple orchid corsage pushing the baby in a stroller, the dad corralling the other kids to make her day special.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Brewing trouble with instant

Yet another rambling post that would have been better with more caffeine:

In my outreach presentation yesterday a preschooler assistant inadvertently spilled some instant coffee crystals onto the floor of the gym. NBD, no big deal. We were all learning about stormwater pollution, and the instant coffee was a stand-in for dog poop. We were also using oregano, dill, and parsley flakes (henceforth ODPF) to represent grass clippings. By the time I succeeded in flushing the soggy ODPF down the preschool potty after the show, the Sanka was surprisingly embedded in the flooring surface.

So there I was still wearing my fish had, trying to remove coffee crystals from industrial flooring with damp dispenser paper towels. When wet the coffee made the floor look more like rain-washed dog poop, a little problem becoming worse under my watch. And, dagnabbit, I was probably swabbing live on the nanny cam!

My first real job was working in the hospital kitchen on the tray line. Wearing a paper hairnet, wielding big ladles, dealing salt, pepper, and Sanka packets onto patient trays next to eating utensils tightly rolled in paper napkins, In many ways, this was the best job ever. Mostly mindless, very social, with opportunities for racing and team-building challenges, mooshing foodstuffs in giant blenders, using steam sprayers like light sabers! A fifteen-minute break with a free canned peach half and a big scoop of hamburger-spaghetti-bake, plus $1.21/hour.

Let's just say the combination of the fish hat and the industrial Sanka mess caused one of those flashbacks our health teachers warned about. My bosses over the years have warned about the dangers of spilling glitter and plaster of Paris on outreach assignments. So far, I've never plugged a classroom drain with plaster of Paris. Hoping the ODPF didn't overwhelm the preschool potty!


© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

eBay before breakfast

Nothing like waking up and finding one of my offerings on eBay sold while I slept. Rushing to kitchen to make coffee so I can work my way through the invoice and shipping process. Then posting a new oddly fabulous item on the auction block.

Found this postcard in the stack, and it held a special curse. For two days now I've had Barry Manilow stuck in my head. The postcard is from about 1960, but the earworm is from 1978.

1978 was a strangely peculiar year. Join me for this really rapid review:

Cowboys beat Broncos BeeGeesFantasy IslandMoonies wed Texas Instruments patents microchipLarry Flynt Eric Heiden  Nancy Lopez Richard Dreyfuss Diane Keaton Nolan Ryan Bjorn Borg Tom Seaver The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (which would later become known as "spam") is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United StatesSteely Dan "Peg" You Light Up My Life  First Class postage 15 cents  Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue Ayatollah Khomeinifirst test tube baby"Evita" premieresGarfield, created by Jim Davis, 1st appears as a comic stripJimmy ConnorsGeorge BrettSid ViciousReggie JacksonLee Iacocca"Taxi" premieres on ABCBegin, Sadat & Carter sign Camp David accord Legionnaire's disease US Commerce Dept says hurricane names will no longer be only female"Dust in the Wind" by KansasPete RoseOh, and nuclear weapons were being tested by several nationsPolish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla elected Pope John Paul IIEqual Rights AmendmentRunning on Empty Jackson BrowneIn Jonestown Guyana 918 members of Peoples Temple are murdered/commit suicide under leadership of cult leader Jim Joneswomen sportswriters cannot be banned from locker roomsShort People Got No ReasonSupreme Court orders Cal medical school to admit Allan Bakke a white man claiming reverse discrimination when application was rejectedDolly Parton "Here You Come Again" 
No fact checkers were harmed in the creation of this post.

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder

Hot, black

Fortunately, I still have white kitchen appliances tonight.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how long this will be the case.

Fortunately, I did not burn down the apartment building.

Unfortunately, the meat loaf never did get done. Maybe a new oven air-dropped in would be a good thing even if it is black.

Fortunately I got to see the small exhibit of Robert Smithson's Texas works at the Dallas Museum of Art last Friday night. His concepts for the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport were amazing. His Amarillo Ramp project was less so.

Unfortunately, there was too big a crowd for me to see the DMA exhibit about light and science in the Islamic world.

Fortunately, I had the Alexandre Hogue dust bowl "Erosion Series" gallery to myself.


Fortunately Unfortunately Remy Charlip

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder

Inn-Room coffee

Walked into the apartment with arms full of groceries, and the smell sent me back forty years... to McCook, Nebraska. Why was I here? Was Peggy Sue getting married?

My scent memory is pretty slow on the up-tick. I went about tasks with vague memories of Sixties roadtrips in the '54 Chevy. Only when the sun began to set did the ON light on the coffee maker shine its tiny green dot. ON? Oh, no! On all day! That smell is the last half cup of coffee left on the burner for ten hours, slowly changing from liquid to solid. Exactly the smell of "Inn-Room" coffee prepared by three kiddies who have already been jumping on the motel beds for a half hour before they experiment with the instant coffee maker at the Cedar Motel on East "C" Street in McCook, Nebraska.

We didn't always stay at the Cedar Motel even though Granddad was friends with the owner. The windows rattled and whined, and Dad had to push matchbooks into the cracks.

Sometimes we checked into the Red Horse Motel farther east on 6/34. The Red Horse had a pool that was a cross between the Great Salt Lake and Jello, only turquoise. Pool chemicals must have been rocket science in the Sixties. The pool was so saturated with chlorine you floated effortlessly, your swimsuit disintegrated, and your petal latex swimcap turned to goo.

To be fair, we stayed at the Chief Motel on B Street (6/34) for the big fiftieth anniversary reunion for Fred and Effa Dale. The trauma of playing a piano piece for all my relatives wiped out any warm, boiled-on coffee scents. Occasionally we stayed at the very viscous Melkus Motel, probably the nicest of the bunch in 69001.

Soaking my Mr. Coffee carafe. Playing poison dart gun with those hollow brown plastic stir sticks and the powdered creamer packets.

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder

Measure twice, cut...

...to the chase?

Double your pleasure, double your commute?

Scrimp in haste, repent on the freeway?

Old saws:

*saw (n.2) 

"proverb, saying, maxim," Old English sagu "saying, discourse, speech, study, tradition, tale," from Proto-Germanic *saga-, *sagon- (cf. Middle Low German, Middle Dutch sage, zage, German Sage "legend, fable, saga, myth, tradition," Old Norse saga "story, tale, saga"), from PIE root *sek(w)- "to say, utter" (see say (v.)).

We won't say just what I uttered when I realized I'd forgotten to fill my coffee travel mug and turn off the cheapo Mr. Coffee before driving to work.

When my wonderful coffee dispenser went flopbot crackerdog and leaked all over the kitchen counter I was feeling seriously broke myself. So I purchased the least expensive twelve-cup Mr. Coffee  at WalMart. Geez, I berate myself just for shopping there.  How much worse can I feel?

Lots of time to ponder this in the traffic jam on 75N aka Central Expressway driving back home from work because I forgot to switch off Mr. Coffee.  Lost over an hour of pay to prevent the darn pot burning down, smelling up the condo, and setting the place on fire by the time I got off work this evening.

Yep, next time I'll spend the big bucks for the automatic shut-off model and consult Poor Richard's Small Appliance Almanack

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder

Things break in threes, please!

Have replaced my cell phone, computer mouse, and coffee maker all this week.

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder

Floors and Wallander

Nothing like an hour pulling up tack strips before breakfast!  Feel the burn?

The creepy old carpet has been cut, rolled, and hauled to the dumpster. The carpet pad had mostly disintegrated or been inhaled, alas. All the living room furniture is shoved and stacked in the dining area. Just getting to the coffee maker means squeezing through a maze.

Prepping the concrete floor for staining feels like old school calisthenic six-count burpees. Work out in the mornings, then review concrete videos on YouTube until the wee hours.

Playing "Wallander" DVDs as I work. A son introduced me to Henning Mankell's detective a few years back. Now stubbly Kenneth Branagh propels my heavy duty scrub brush. Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo's theme song percolates up through the concrete.

Home Depot employees are my new best friends. Plan to finish removing plaster and adhesives from the concrete tomorrow. Saturday evening Inspector Wallander and I will be repairing cracks and divots in the slab. So it won't be a mystery if the blog is set aside.

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder

A Veritable Feast OR What Would Diebenkorn Do?

"Readers who prefer clueless heroines, pointless gore and evil mumbo jumbo will find a veritable feast in Littlewood's debut."-- Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2013 issue, page eighteen.

Next to black coffee and a breakfast burrito, nothing kicks a day into gear like a Kirkus. I got all deja voodoo like you do so well when I read of a poet obsessed with the word "garbanzo" in Nicholson Baker's novel Traveling Sprinkler, due out in September.  The Kirkus review of this book won't go online to nonsubscribers for another month, but the Paris Review has added to my anticipation:

Why aren't there more novels about Quaker worship?  It's inherently dramatic, people sitting in silence and waiting for God to speak through them. Dramatic--and really, really funny. For proof look no further than Nicholson Baker's forthcoming novel, Traveling Sprinkler.

I just read a novel about Quaker worship, Tracy Chevalier's The Last Runaway, but that novel lacked garbanzos. Speaking of lacking garbanzos, my sister's Bethesda grocery stores lack Sabra Luscious Lemon Hummus, my current favorite. I have only found this flavor at Market Street grocery stores, but it's worth a longer drive for a fix!

For a Quaker moment I've spent time in James Turrell's Skyspace "Tending (Blue)" at the Nasher Sculpture Center. That experience has been ruined by the hot glare reflected off a new mirrored luxury condo skyscraper next door. Sadly, you can read about that in the New York Times:

One of my favorite Turrell pieces is the Skyspace “Tending (Blue),” which is inside a small stone building behind the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. To reach the piece, you pass through a Renzo Piano-designed building filled with northern light, then you cross the clean, clear lines of a landscape by Peter Walker. By the time you enter the Skyspace, the city of Dallas is long forgotten. I once lost the better part of a day inside, staring up as clouds lofted and flattened against the ceiling. But last year, a mirrored skyscraper went up nearby, reflecting glare into the building, killing plants in the garden and looming into view of the Skyspace. The museum had to close it.

As the battle continues, getting nearer and nearer to, gasp, litigation I wonder why tent dresses and muu-muus haven't been considered. That look is working for the Washington Monument during earthquake repairs. As my plane landed at Reagan National a few weeks ago the monument looked sort of chubby and gray on a rainy day. Maybe I needed my glasses adjusted. But no, the monument is draped with fabric over the scaffolding, and lighted to create a limited-time-only tourist attraction.

 

What is a "veritable feast"? Once it meant the feast was worthy of the name, a major banquet spread with or without national holiday status. Now the "veritable feast" is under a snarky dome of rhetorical affected tone.

On the way to a dental appointment, I was hypnotized by an NPR interview with Anna Badkhen, author of The World is a Carpet. Now I am under the spell of her sensuous writing. Got the book at my beautiful library. For beautiful libraries, check out this online list. It's a veritable feast of literary luxury.

Above the library the town hall reconstruction goes clonking and BAMMING along. Down below, we have our reflexes tested and thank heaven for each survival. I feel like the roadrunner racing below the falling anvil while working the circulation desk. On a tour of the construction area I thought of Richard Diebenkorn. What would he do? He would take the construction lines and the colors of the early evening clouds to build the monument. Then he would drape and erase his construction, not with mumbo jumbo, but with a clear conviction to erase the precious and push himself to a new solution.

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder

Extra! Extra! Bras in the news!

Hey, look at the headline. Historical news is being made:

Charged, as I have been, with single-handedly keeping print media alive via the Internet, this was another happy day on task. Waiting for coffee to brew, I flipped through the business section of The Dallas Morning News en route to the sudoku. 

Why, bless my boobies! Hanesbrands now owns Maidenform on its way to becoming an evil underwire monopoly. This is big, big news, as it turns out average bra size is increasing.

More entertaining newspaper items were aquaponic gardening to feed a family of eight, and a seed library blossoming in repurposed card catalog drawers. It's obviously a Barnum and Bailey world, but it wouldn't be make-believe if I believed in WonderBra.

Now just imagine growing tomatoes in Madonna's bra. It gives tomato cages a whole new meaning. Voila!

Topsy-Turvy Tomatoes + MiracleGro + A Fish Out of Water  = WonderBra! 

F.A.Q.s:

Q. Wasn't Tom Hanks in a really dumb sitcom called "Bosom Buddies"?
A. Yes, with Peter Scolari back before "Newhart" and "Big".

Q. Isn't a subscription for daily home newspaper delivery getting pretty pricey?
A. Indeed. It's about thirty dollars a month.

Q. Won't the Bobby Book post tell of this blogger's very first crush?
A. Yes, but that will have to wait until after this bizoom update.

Q. Doesn't the blogger at Plano Prairie Garden have a better plan for tomato support?
A. Yes, he uses cattle panel.

Q. Why do reasonably intelligent people say "preventative" when they mean "preventive"?
A. I don't know, but it makes me crabby.

Extra! Extra!
They're drawing a red line
Around the biggest scoop
Of the decade...
A barrel of charm,
A fabulous thrill,
The biggest little headline
In vaudeville

Presenting...in person...
That 3 foot 3Bundle of dynamite...
Baby...June!


© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder

Yo ho ho me hearties!

Out-heartied by my sister.  She was three for three from the breakfast free throw lane:

• Day 1.  Popovers with hot maple syrup 
• Day 2.  Fried eggs and buttermilk drop biscuits
• Day 3.  Waffles with hot syrup or fresh strawberries and whipped cream

Years ago I ceded popover ground to her, and planted my flag instead on old-fashioned German egg pancakes. Her bacon is crisp, but she doesn't make coffee. Perhaps she was adopted! And all this time I thought biscuits came from a Pillsbury cardboard tube.

Sending a removing-old-caulk-and-grout shout-out to my thighs. I'm stiff and sore after a new assault on the usptairs bathtub. Caulking is not as fun as frosting Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, but dummies can do it.

This is not my sister's recipe, but it's close and it made me laugh. I was in charge of clumping the butter and milk.


© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder

Squandering my mid-life crisis

I only have the little red rental car for three days while the blue baby Buick is being restored. That Tax Day fender bender in the grocery store parking lot has taken awhile to sort out.

I've learned many things about cars, drivers, collision repair, and insurance, and it can be summed up as follows:

1. Don't have an accident.
2. Look back over your shoulder one more time.
3. Get the rental coverage on your policy.
4. Insurance people don't care that you've never had an accident before and you do not speak their foreign lingo.
5. Whip out your smart phone and take photos of everything.
6. Even if you prefer grinding coffee beans each morning, keep an emergency supply of ground coffee. 

The cedar waxwings are going crazy over the berries on the yaupon holly bushes in front of the condo. A warning siren should sound when they are going to swoop in or away.

The warning siren could sound like this:

      Nee-naw! Nee-naw! 



We had language difficulties on the playground today. One of the French students was asking if the noise was a firetruck, but we thought she was asking to use the sidewalk chalk.

A siren sounded in my head last Wednesday when my Mr. Coffee grinder went flopbot. No ground coffee stashed anywhere in the condo, just beans from Trader Joe's. This could have been a very ugly situation if I had not had two birthday gift cards--one for Starbucks, and one for getting a new coffee grinder at Kohls.

Meeow uses a coffee mug to make the siren on his box fire engine.

Apple amaryllis collage 2009 N. Ruder

A is for apples and amaryllis
B is for Buick bashed in
C is for collision
D is for deductible
E is for educational
F is lest we forget Meeow and the Big Box
G is for gas tank filled before returning rental

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder