Bangs in the Time of Coronavirus

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There's got to be something besides the part & barrette look and the half-inch-long bangs... I need a motion-activated voice in the bathroom that says, "Step away from the scissors!"


© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

When ants can't shampoo

In the middle of the annual bathroom tiny ant invasion the apartment complex was sold. New owners, new management, same social insects. The new managers are tackling the foundation problems, the plumbing leaks, and quickly learning they are the proud owners of a large fixer-upper built atop a massive ant hill.

This isn't a luxury apartment community bursting with amenities, no matter how you spin it. This is just a reasonably safe and affordable spot in the city I've called home since 1990. So in springtime when the water is turned off to fix leaks, the ants and I can't shampoo. No Head & Shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes, knees and toes--ants have six legs, of course.

Ask me about ant-induced irritability.

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

Bathroom ants refuse to Brexit

Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae, tiny socialist insects belonging to the European Union and colonizing my bathroom just as they do early every spring. You can set your calendar by their arrival, and pretty much nothing will hasten their departure, not TSA-Pre, and not those nice young men in their clean white coats.

We admitted we were powerless over hormigas and our lives had become unmanageable. Every March my big powerful rent-paying, lease-signing sanity is brought to its knees by these tiny black ants in the bathroom.  They show up first as a reminder of flashbacks warnings from Seventies high school health teachers. "We aren't really here. Nanny nanny boo boo!" Little spots before my eyes.

Getting home after six, the ants have become proud, brave, and bold. They are marching around in the white porcelain parade grounds of tub and sink. Their homemade banners proclaim they are not figments or flashbacks, and are not covered by vision insurance.

I press my fists to my closed eyelids. Inside the optical theater the ants appear vibrating orange against blue, then energized lilac against white. Rothko meets Orkin. The ants are colluding. I can't delete them.  They have Twitter and facebook accounts, and I am their hostage.

Apartment management sent The Pest Guy. He told me it would get a lot worse before it gets better. The ants circled his bait like frat pledges at a kegger. Indeed, it began to look like ant Woodstock as more and more arrived to partake of the electric Kool-aid, and wander around in circles before (according to the pest guy) taking the bait back to share at their hormiga commune.

The library has two new rock concert DVDs--"The Doors Live at the Bowl '68," and the "Monterey Pop Festival." It wouldn't be much trouble to show videos for the tiny ants in the bathroom, and the project might keep me from smashing them with my guitar or lighting them on fire. I could just turn out the lights and shut the door. Maybe tomorrow morning it will just have been a one of those health class flashbacks.

When the music's over

Turn out the lights

Turn out the lights

Turn out the lights, yeah

And thanks so much to Farmer Derek for his satellite image of cows saying, "hi."

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

No knees, no hips, no shoulders?

Major contraption.

The TSA-Pre screener asked the question fast, "No knees, no hips, no shoulders?"

Huh? I thought he said "sore knees, sore hips, sore shoulders," and answered "yes." How did he know I'd been sitting on the floor with my grandson playing Legos and Lite-Brite for two days?

"No, wait," I said as it dawned on me he was asking if I was titanium-free. He stared and slowly asked, "All   original   equipment?" like I might possibly be hearing impaired. Nodding and miming that I was creaky but manufacturer parts only, he waved me through the machine.

Our solar system and another solar system nearby. Pluto is far left.

Remember when Barbie was unbendable and needed a metal stand? Nobody told us it was our future!

  

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Get that guy an egg timer

How many sudoku do you do, dear, before you call the cops?

One clue.
Assumptions of gender and age.  Male. Teen.
No pounding on the bathroom door. Only child.
Possible crime or accident scene.

You've  read the book. You've seen the movie. 

The victim is only discovered when the water overflows into the next apartment.

Natural causes?
Murder?
Suicide?
Water waster?

Saturday evening just home from work to the plumbing roar of the shower running in the next apartment. Kick off shoes, get a beverage, boot up computer, plug in phone, write to-do list for the weekend. The shower is still running. This guy (I assume) must have a hot Saturday night date. Or, more likely, the tenant has fallen and hit his head on the faucet, his blubbery, wrinkled body blocking the drain, water overflowing down into the vacant show model unit.

Time to dial 9-1-1?

But, no. The shower is off.

Alarm rings at 7:20 this morning and the shower guy is cleaning up again. Unbelievable! I do a sudoku (medium difficulty), write a grocery list, and begin a second puzzle. Water is still running. This is serious. Either the guy is a serial bathtub murderer, or he just uses up all the hot water for the entire building to torture us. He must  be stopped! I'm calling the cops!

P.S. No singing heard.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Miss Scarlet in the Lavatory with the Shower Curtain

Like millions of Americans I live in an apartment painted a weird Pittsburgh Paint color between grey poupon mustard and hummus. The color is the go-to for multi-family community management companies because if at first it makes tenants nauseous, in no time at all it becomes invisible.

Amazon Prime shipped its "Basic" shower curtain and vinyl shower curtain liner with hooks for about twenty-two bucks via flying monkeys.  Yippee! The shower curtain looks fab with hummus/poupon paint.  Bad news: the clear vinyl liner fumes may kill me before I get a test morning shower.



© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Churches--Rice Chex and diamonds

Wandering the pedestrian district of Alghero's Old City I found some of its churches. without the help of maps or apps. I'd been admonished against walking around with a big doofus tourist paper map. My phone with Google Maps and I are still getting acquainted. So I just moseyed around trying to be observant of my surroundings to build a sense of direction and location, and to not twist my ankle on the cobblestones. Very old school, and not terribly efficient, but I did not fall of the edge of the earth or into the Sea of Sardinia.


Speaking of old school, do kids get to make salt/water/flour maps any more? That would be a good for extra credit on my Sardinia report. I would also like to make a model of the Old City out of boxes, tp tubes,  and three-penny school milk cartons! Thanks to Wikipedia for the map idea...

As soon as I passed the final exam of Medieval and Renaissance Art History my brain erased everything about cathedrals except a few vague hints for crossword puzzles. In my defense, it was a very early morning class in a cold, dark basement lecture hall with machine-dispensed ten-cent coffee in paper cups.

My room at the Hotel San Francesco had "sober furnishings" according to the website. It was perfect! The very helpful Franciscans at the desk 24/7 were never surprised when I dropped off my key to leave, or found my way back to retrieve it for shower and sleep. Wish I could have heard a concert in the cloister as part of the Musica & Natura 2016 series.

 

Just imagining the cloister accoustics!  

Church of Saint Francis

The Cathedral of Saint Virgin Mary was the setting for the religious ceremony, so I was too preoccupied to properly study the architecture and sacred art. The Cathedral has a diamond floor and a Neoclassical facade (narthex for crossword folks). It was the only Neoclassical architecture I saw in Alghero, and it felt out of place. We did not throw rice at the newlyweds, although it is a Sardinian custom.

 

It also had a section to the right under reconstruction, and some challenges for wheelchair-bound visitors.

 

 
It took a long time to catch on that the Gothic bell tower was part of the same church. I could still be wrong. This is the portal to the bell tower, approached up a shaded narrow street in the early evening:

I liked the wooden doors of the entrance to the Orthodox Church of Saint Barbara:

The dome of the Chiesa di San Michele is a stunning, colorful landmark of Alghero. The dome has a diamond pattern of tiles, but the floor inside is checkerboard. The polychrome dome tiles may date from the 1950s, if my translation is correct.

Barrel vault

Happy wandering!

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Falling out of bed into accomplishment

In the big scheme of things would you rather have more sex or more storage space? This is a serious question! And the winner is ... under-the-bed storage space!

Bed stilts have a 27-month lifespan in the calmest of settings. And, bingo, time was up. So much for kicking off the three-day weekend chilling, making sunprints, skyping, napping, and finishing that book about coyotes.

Bed stilts

Instead I've been snorting a couple years of high quality dust. Even opened the computer tower for major cleaning. Put it back together, reconnected everything, and the old Gateway booted up like a champ. Bibbity bobbity achoo!

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Not a drop to drink

Water, water everywhere, and not a chance to think! Eight water-themed nature classes for kiddies in the next month, and a shortage of time to prepare, so I'm feeling a tad stressed. Wishing I had a tadpole or two to share Thursday morning for "Who Lives In the Water?" with preschoolers.

We will be able to make frog prints (yes, Cinderella, someday your prints will come), and rubber-stamp fishies and insects near the construction paper and muffin cup lily pad.

We will sing duck songs with the help of Raffi MP3 downloads, and a coworker with a ukelele. .
We will not sing "Have you seen the little ducks swimming in the water" with an Aussie accent*. It's good to outsource the singing! I could start a page for tone deaf tadpole teachers on facebook.

Standing under the shower faucet spray I tried to sort out the age-appropriate concepts for all the presentations while not getting soap in my eyes. Glad to know there are kiddie water-conservation gimme toothbrushes since washing hands and brushing teeth are major ways little kids can reduce consumption.

Growing up in the primitive post-Sputnik years, I learned about watersheds and volcanoes by playing with mashed potatoes and scram gravy. Grasping of geography and Nebraska history was dependent upon salt-water-flour maps shaped on shirt cardboard at the very last minute. The best way to learn physics and engineering concepts was to spend hot afternoons wading in a mud bottom creek when you visited Grandma. Giving a thunderstorm mindfulness was enhanced by a root beer float in a copper mug sitting inside the carport, or a chocolate peanut sundae in a tall glass while perched on the front stoop.

Plants need water and our brains do, too. Research shows our mood and attention are restored by time spent near ponds, lakes, creeks, and oceans no matter how old we are. Oh, to be eight years old walking barefoot to collect hailstones after a thunderstorm to store in the Frigidaire freezer.


* My musical little sister had an Australian preschool teacher, and sang this song with an accent 24/7 for a long time:


Have you seen the little ducks
Swimming in the water?
Mother, father, baby ducks,
Grand-mamma and daughter.

Have you seen them dip their bills,
Swimming in the water?
Mother, father, baby ducks,
Grand-mamma and daughter.

Have you seen them flap their wings,
Swimming in the water?
Mother, father, baby ducks,

Grand-mamma and daughter.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Not just for breakfast!

My favorite black and yellow Argiope, also known as a zipper orbie, caught a grasshopper in her web and wrapped it up Friday. This is a big job even for a big girl like her. She has been showing off for garden visitors for a week now, and mostly getting oohs and ahs and photos. Some folks cannot be enticed to walk down the little trail to see her, no matter how I explain that she is good luck for a gardener and won't hurt people.

Yesterday the web was sparkling with raindrops. After almost an inch of wonderful precipitation a family watched in awe as a metallic green fly got stuck in the web. All four family members were sad when the fly fell out of the web while the spider was rushing over to wrap it.

The rain did not deter the hummingbirds from swooping through the garden to the vibrant red cannas. This pipevine swallowtail waited until the rain let up to visit the lantana.

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder

Perfume for a drought

Perhaps the only scent more beguiling than this oncoming thunderstorm would be eau de standing outside a lumber yard in a downpour. The cars on the street rumble whoosh splash, a slick silver sound.

 

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder

Eureka! I have found it!

I am not here to dispute whether Archimedes ran naked through the streets after discovering the principle of water displacement. Indeed, I would suggest the Greek shower instead of bathing, saving five to fifteen gallons of water. Archimedes could even hang a watering can over the faucet while he waits for the water to get hot enough. The one to two gallons captured in the watering can would go right down the drain otherwise. Instead, Archimedes could water the plants on the balcony. He could even pour it into the next washer load. Eureka! He would save water.




And now some shadowy shower photos of the watering can matched with student art class value studies--

By the way, you and Eu and Archimedes have a few more hours to take the Mayors' Water Conservation Challenge here. Plano is sixth for cities with populations between 100,000 and 299,999 at the moment.

Polonius, not Archimedes, said "Neither a shower athlete nor a shower diva be." And we all know what happened to him behind the arras. Yep. Dead for a ducat, dead. Act 3, scene 4.     

The preschoolers are back in the gardening business, growing cabbage, spinach, and radishes. The classroom rabbit, Oreo, is perpetually famished. That means small persons are filling and carrying watering cans. Natural consequences are at work. Keep that spout up, or wear soggy shoes!

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder