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

Christmas Eve at your neighborhood Walmart

Might be time for a tin foil hat to block those brain swiping rays from the extraterrestrials. I've remained disturbed by the wacky messages I receive when my prescriptions are ready to pick up. Again today I heard the voice say,  "nose not getting Libby."

Since Christmas Eve is a perfectly reasonable time to wear a tin foil hat in Walmart, I drove on over to the jam-packed parking lot. It was obviously two-for-one nutty fruitcake day, and many fruitcakes were driving the motorized shopping carts.

The competent kid with the Bloom County Steve Dallas hairstyle was at the desk wearing his blue Walmart vest covered in pins and buttons in protest of his soul-sucking job dealing with germy nutsos. When I told him the outgoing Rx notification voice message was goofed up he just shrugged me off. No doubt he'd waited on several dozen deranged old ladies by then, and it wasn't even one-thirty.

I shuffled off to buy trash bags and Woolite. [Let me be clear, I was not wearing slippers or pajamas, but real dressed-for-the-day clothes.] Picked up some more rolls of Reynolds Wrap, as one can't be too careful. Putin probably controls the space invaders, too.

Wandering past the pharmacy again on my way to check out, there was Brenda at the drop-off prescription window. Brenda has been there forever, since at least 2010 which is very long in Walmart years. She remains sane and helpful because she used to manage a day care. This is a walk in the park by comparison, she's said. When I told Brenda my story of the Libby's nose message, she was polite, intrigued, and in good humor. She was apologetic, and listened several times to the short voice mail on my phone that I hear as:

...nose not getting Libby.

So nice to be taken seriously! I wished her a merry Christmas, and she assured me she would get the message fixed.

Back home without my foil hat, I listened to the message again. It doesn't mention noses or Libby, nor my prescription being ready. It's a fragment, to be sure, but it says:

... ñol, marque nueve.

Ah. "For Spanish, press nine."

© 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

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

MOG PEPO is not what you think

NWA fall of 1977

MOG PEPO is a condition closely associated with MOBO. UNESCO should create an NGO humanitarian relief organization to deal with this international challenge even though contagion vectors are not yet clearly defined.

Glossary:

MOBO -- Mother of boys only
MOG  -- Mother of the groom
NGO  -- Non-governmental organization (relief)
PEPO  -- Panic early, panic often (motto)
Tencel  -- A semi-synthetic form of rayon
FCO  -- An alleged airport in Rome
CFA -- Compostable formal attire
NPR -- Pledge drive
TLT -- Think lovely thoughts (Mind over matter method for Darling children to achieve lift-off after Peter Pan blows the fairy dust on them)
NWA -- Newlywed apartment (SEE Macrame)

Imagine how very delighted my youngest son will be when I arrive at his destination wedding location with a roller bag full of plastic newspaper sleeves, then sit on a stoop weaving and braiding the bags into  a stunning full-length formal gown appropriate for all MOG occasions.

We receive a minimum of four "newspaper sleeves" every library day, and most days several more. Hmmm. Perhaps macrame. Tying the knot...

I'm not suggesting the wedding guests remove and compost their formal attire right there at the reception.  That would be bad on several levels. Thinking more about how to make extra space for souvenirs in my carry-on luggage for the return flight.


© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

You can't see me!

I’m not really here!

Went behind the fence to retrieve the wood building blocks, binoculars, and other toys that had been thrown over. These photos are the back side of the bird blind with its feeding shelf of birdseed and peanuts. This squirrel was acting so oddly I started to think she was really stuck like Santa in the chimney. Did she eat too much? As I walked to either side, she would turn her head, but didn't move a bit otherwise. When I finally got within a foot and a half, out she popped and ran off lickety-split.

• Wait a sec! Does lickety have one t or two? Only one, and I just plain don't have time to wonder about "a lick and a promise" this evening. Not going there. 

• Also not wondering how the squirrel would look hiding behind the arras with Polonius in Act 3, Scene IV.

• Was the squirrel waiting in the wings for the cue to enter, stage right or stage left and say, "Aha! Now we know the identity of the murderer"? 

• Was the attempt to become invisible a sign of squirrel intelligence? 

I keep trying to write a post about the many things I learned while preparing my "Trim a Tree for Wildlife" program, most particularly about receiving a gift pamphlet about commensal rodents. This, again, is not the evening for that endeavor. 

Online Etymology Dictionary indicates "mensa" is related to table like mesa, not moon or monthly. The meaning of the high IQ Mensa organization: 

The word "Mensa" means "table" in Latin. Mensa is a round-table society, where race, color, creed, national origin, age, politics, educational or social background are irrelevant.

That's all just dandy, but I want the squirrel to eat at the birdfeeder, not at my table, no matter how smart and theatrical it is.

Oh, and olly olly oxen free!

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

A few new strings is all

Got it now. Thanks! Wrapping the stair rail with holiday lights did the trick.

Yes, it's late to be getting the Christmas commercial spirit. Not so belated for THE REST of the holiday outlook. You know, those parts with meaning, family, friends, gratitude, joy, wonder, waiting, weather changes, music, sharing, postage stamps, senses, and twinkly lights. Particularly blue twinkly lights, but also white, purple, pink, and assorted. As many strands of 70-100 lights as needed to make it seem complete, and just $2.98/string.

 

While I was a-wrapping the railing the little family in the next apartment emerged. How many months have they lived next door? Why do we never cross paths? Now we have exchanged greetings. It's not wassailing, but it's a start toward neighborliness.

Time is a-flying now. It flew up the flue while you gawked at the gorgeous, bright, soggy fall leaves. As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they meet with an atomic leaf-blower get sucked into a giant plastic bag.

So few days left in the year to tell people I hold them dear. The days are so short I don't even unplug the extension cord for the lights.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

When squirrels have drones

The squirrel is on the railing of the balcony just under the new birdfeeder monitoring my reaction. It is probably a grandchild of the squirrel that finally defeated and destroyed last winter's birdfeeder.

The young squirrel wants to know just how ballistic I will go. Is our upcoming struggle WWIII? A three-ring circus? Perhaps a departmental conflict/communication style assessment?

Gail Collins of the New York Times has me concerned that this young squirrel might receive an unregulated hobby drone for Christmas. 

In her op-ed, "Dreading Those Drones" of October 30, 2015 she writes:


Now it’s true that squirrels knock out power lines and nobody’s talking about regulating them. But squirrels don’t get in the way of passenger planes. 

My squirrel nemesis of last year.

Gail Collins did not mention the possibility of squirrels in bras in Home Depot in her column, but you just can't make this stuff up:

What if this had been a squirrel?

I had been contemplating a return to wire sculpture with hardware, door keys and rusty zipper pulls. But I HAD NOT got so far into my artistic plan as to enlist squirrels to collect 3D collage material in exchange for unlimited access to bird feed.

Yes, it looks suspicious that I wrote on my departmental Secret Santa preference questionnaire that I liked Chex Mix, black coffee, butterflies, insects, postage stamps, rocks, and old door keys. It's just that uncompliant streak in my nature to push back at organized ho-ho-hoing.

And while Dave Barry, Molly Ivins, and Bart Simpson have all expressed the notion that you just can't make this stuff up, to my knowledge I'm the only person who has ever received this occupational title in a performance review:

KEEPER OF THAT STUFF

Which stuff? THAT stuff!

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Detain that bag lady!

Got a lead on bur oak acorns at a specific corner in an affluent neighborhood. I needed those acorns for the seedy kiddie class, along with sweet gum prickly stars and pecans. So there I was wandering in the park with a plastic bag and no poopy canine to clean up after.

There's a handsome specimen of a bur oak tree in a lawn, so I walk up the middle of the street to find nuts by the curb and on the public sidewalk. A man comes out of a nearby house to walk his labradoodle doggy, but instead watches me. He takes a smart phone photo of this nutcase autumn leafy homeless bag lady loitering and jaywalking in his neighborhood.

No, I am not sleeping in my old Buick. I have jobs. I don't mutter much, at least not audibly, and only in English. Smell? I pass the sniff test. Shoes? Functional, not stylish.

If the resident calls the police to report me this could get weird. "You gotta whole lotta 'splaining to do." I've never been frisked, except by airport security. "Frisky" is a word for teaching preschoolers about squirrels. I just want to teach kids about the bounty of fall and the fascinating shapes of seeds.

Being just a bit outside the comfort zone seems scary. How does it feel trying to get by, to stay under the radar as a daily strategy?


© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Chalk in the corner pocket

Today we repurposed the first piece of billiards table slate in the children's nature garden. Kids can sit in the hanging "chrysalis chair" and decide what to draw. The corner pocket cut out of the slate holds a flower pot with sidewalk chalk.

Brawny volunteers who were ready to take on any task that did not involve pulling weeds moved the slate into position and leveled the ground. My chalk thank you note to the volunteers has already been erased in a downpour. The slate is clean and ready for the first kids to discover it.

Can't wait to see what they draw!!

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

N is for noticing nests in November

Craning my neck lately as nests become more visible in the baring branches. These are at the Rory Meyers Children's Adventure Garden in Dallas. The first is in the Kaleidoscope exhibit. The second is above the touch tank in the Texas Wetlands exhibit. The first seems tidy and homogeneous. The second is a crazy construction of natural and man-made materials.

Nodded off to sleep thinking not nest thoughts but cranes. At the UT-Dallas campus it is always craning!

A crane fly

Regretting that I've been so busy I missed the fall sandhill crane migration on the Rowe Sanctuary's crane cam. Craning my neck for a view of a future with a five-day work week.

crane (n.) 

Old English cran "large wading bird," common Germanic (cognates: Old Saxon krano, Old High German krano, German Kranich, and, with unexplained change of consonant, Old Norse trani), from PIE *gere-(cognates: Greek geranos, Latin grus, Welsh garan, Lithuanian garnys "heron, stork"), perhaps echoic of its cry. Metaphoric use for "machine with a long arm" is first attested late 13c. (a sense also in equivalent words in German and Greek).

crane (v.) 

"to stretch (the neck)," 1799, from crane (n.). Related: Craned; craning.

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder

Gone beyond the buzz

Spending each day outside in the garden, I don't much notice the buzz of bees any more. They are just doing their job, same as me. Late this afternoon it seemed like a loud and large bee was right behind my ear. Nope. It was a drone.

It looked like this one.

And why doesn't drone rhyme with gone? And can just anybody fly a drone over a public space for photographic or world domination purposes? I won't go on and on, but I love this entry from the Online Etymology Dictionary:

drone (n.) 

Old English dran, dræn "male honeybee," from Proto-Germanic *dran- (cognates: Middle Dutch drane; Old High German treno; German Drohne, which is from Middle Low German drone), probably imitative; given a figurative sense of "idler, lazy worker" (male bees make no honey) 1520s. Meaning "pilotless aircraft" is from 1946.

Drones, as the radio-controlled craft are called, have many potentialities, civilian and military. Some day huge mother ships may guide fleets of long-distance, cargo-carrying airplanes across continents and oceans. Long-range drones armed with atomic bombs could be flown by accompanying mother ships to their targets and in for perfect hits. ["Popular Science," November, 1946]

Meaning "deep, continuous humming sound" is early 16c., apparently imitative (compare threnody). The verb in the sound sense is early 16c.; it often is the characteristic sound of airplane engines. Related:Droned; droning.

The big debate at work was over the pronunciation of potable. I caught some dragonfly and damselfly larvae for a late morning presentation. I did not want anybody to accidentally drink the water containing the larvae. That's when folks started taking sides. I say potable, you say potable. Let's call the whole thing off!*

Due to rains and flooding of the Big Blue River near Milford, huge barrels of potable water were trucked into Camp Kiwanis for the Camp Fire Girls to drink in the summer of 1966.

^*1po·ta·ble

 adjective \ˈpō-tə-bəl\

: safe to drink

Don't say: pottable | Do say: potable

Comment: The adjective meaning "drinkable" rhymes with "floatable" and is not to be confused with the one that means "capable of being potted."

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder

Lucky Charms

Thinking green thoughts for friends planning travel to Ireland. Green thoughts, too, for the Martian alien weirdness of spring! Nature is jam-packed with so many bizarre ways for life forms to grow, feed, reproduce, and conserve energy.

So this post is only about green weirdness and wonder close to home.

Not a stegosaurus

Prickly pear duet

Oak gall

Ruffle design inspiration

Ooh! Design a hat for derby day?

Like the leaf shape

Probably poisonous

Beetles are not for breakfast

They're magically delicious!

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder

Peeps are green, but hell is a cafeteria

Second from right.

My dear mentor muse posted an old snapshot of three cousins in bell-bottoms. Hers were green*. But what green exactly? Taking snapshot age and yellowing into consideration, I'm thinking maybe Pantone 357.

I see her flashback outfit and raise with my own frightening outfit of that approximate era. It was a double knit polyester plaid battle jacket worn with matching skirt, white turtleneck shell, white knee-socks and green suede shoes. The battle jacket could also be worn with matching bell-bottoms with two-inch cuffs. And what green would that be??? Half-way between green Peeps chicks and Ghostbusters' Slimer green. About Pantone 361. Thank heaven I'm unable to find a grainy color snapshot of the ensemble.

Second from right.

A really sharp preschool student has difficulty distinguishing between green and orange across a range of tints, shades, and saturations. Is he color blind? When is it appropriate to test, and how is it done? 

A six year-old is being introduced to singular and plural nouns. A singular boy is working. Plural boys are picking their noses. It seems like half the class has sinusitis, again somewhere between Peeps and Slimer. When is it appropriate to test, and what Pantone is it!? Usually 373.

• Her bell-bottoms were green.
• Her pants were green.
• Her three-piece suit was green.

What about hell? You are in line at your dormitory cafeteria with your meal plan card. You have lived in the dorm for forty or fifty years, but have never made it to the cafeteria before. You don't get a tray, but walk down the line and ask for the potatoes and scrambled eggs. The lady in the hairnet serves them with her ice cream scoop onto your paper placemat. There's no way to get jelly for your toast from the giant jar. Everyone ignores your search for a chair. ALL the seats are taken. Nobody has bussed the tables in forever. There are clean tables OVER THERE, but the hairnet ladies are putting pieces of pie with whipped cream and iceberg lettuce with Ranch dressing at all the places. There are NO CHAIRS. Your paper placemat is disintegrating. Aiaiaiyerghhh!

Maybe this nightmare was caused by the fresh asparagus/potato/celery/sugar snap pea/olive/tomato/honey mustard dressing salad I whomped up last evening. Maybe it was the polyester double-knit flashback. My health class teacher warned us about this.

• She dropped one singular knife in the Welchs grape jelly jar.
• She dropped all the plural knives in the jelly jar.
• She way sticky way up past her elbow and it was a really bad nightmare.

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder