MRI-induced flashbacks

Howie, who would have turned 95 this week, made me promise I would never let "them" do another MRI on him. His experience with the test in his mid-eighties brought on WWII foxhole flashbacks. My recent readings of Dad's WWII letters gave me greater understanding of this very post-post traumatic stress.

Now I would have an MRI. On my knee. And I have my own anxiety issues. And my high school Health class teacher drilled those flashback warnings into our teen minds.

"Do you have any metal in your eye?," asked the pre-procedure person from the diagnostic center. wwwww. This totally creeped me out, and it was lucky I didn't faint. I have a thing about eyes.

"Do you have any shrapnel in your body?," she asked. "Do you weigh over 150 pounds?," I heard. Well, yes, who doesn't nowadays? "REALLY?"

It seems the pre-procedure person meant 350 pounds (158.7 kilograms).  Okay, not. I will still fit in the foxhole. That's a good personal wellness program goal.

"Are you claustrophobic?," asked the persistent pre-procedure lady. Waaa haaa ha hah! Won't we all just find out!?

If King Tut and Hedy Lamarr had a love child, it would "frequency hop" in an MRI tube. I crossed my arms across my chest holding the crook and flail. Isis, Osiris, meniscus chanted in syncopated rhythm.


© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Quick, hand me the pliers!

Enjoyed my trip to the dentist this morning, which is to say I did not gag or have a panic attack. I was truly dreading my second crown, as the first about ten years ago was a ghastly experience.

Last evening I reread Pvt. Mastalir's description of military dentistry to work up some enthuiasm for the civilian type. Also some gratitude for dental insurance...

When Dad was finishing his Army Specialist Training Corp program at Georgetown University in December 1943 he woke up with a very stiff jaw, sore throat, and sore tooth. He went to sick bay, and the doctor told him he was cutting a wisdom tooth, and the upper tooth was biting down on the gum.

The next day a dentist at Fort Meyer told a different story. Dad's lower wisdom tooth was embedded in his jaw. The upper wisdom tooth biting down had caused an infection in the gum and tooth. The only treatment would be pulling the upper tooth, then treating the infection before pulling the lower tooth. So the dentist yanked out the upper tooth, and Dad wrote his Ma before the feeling came back.

"Treating the infection" seems to mean mostly gargling with hot salt water for two weeks. Dad was a lifelong believer in this practice. A couple weeks after the first extraction he rode the bus back to Fort Meyer. He got in the chair at 1:15, and was all done and back outside waiting for the bus at 1:45. It was the easiest extraction the dentist had ever done, and he was sorry he sterilized so many tools he did not end up using.

Dad gloated about his free dental work that would have cost $25 for a civilian! Not today. Not this civilian.

I always feel like a total failure at the dentist. The dentist, hygienist, and other staff are all trying to carve Mount Rushmore in my teeth with their  picks and mirrors. My tongue is always trying to knock Gutzon Borglum off the mountain.

For the first time in my life I was offered nitrous oxide. Glory Hallelujiah! Then Denise used a magic wand to take digital CAD images of my tooth. I just kept thinking it was like the Google street view camera car back there and I hoped it wasn't bulk trash day on my cul-de-sac. That and trying to remember who sang the songs on the Dental Oldies Radio playlist. (answers below)

Little Ditty About Jack and Diane--John Mellencamp
Runnin' Down a Dream--Tom Petty
Still the Same--Bob Seger
Open Your Heart--Madonna
Gimme Three Steps--Lynyrd Skynyrd
Hit Me With Your Best Shot--Pat Benatar

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

Straight talk from Our Nation's Capital

Washington D.C., no matter your political philosophy, is That Place Where Everyone's Thinking is Seriously Skewed. We can blame this misalignment on many things, but for the moment I am leaning toward the Washington Monument. Even if you back out into the middle of the street with red taxis rushing past, you will still not get a photo at 90 degrees, high noon. So most people, tourists included, just walk around looking at their phones until they suddenly find themselves encircled by a dangerous herd of Segways blocking the crosswalk. And that is why I am grateful for the Jefferson Memorial, a much easier shoot, just a tad off horizontally.

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

Trade-offs before breakfast

Ya gotta git up mighty early to wrangle with the US Postal Service about re-delivery of a previously attempted delivery of ten pounds of bird feeder seeds. Do not attempt the email query function at the website. Typing in the twenty-one digits of the tracking code before the first coffee of the morning took too many tries.  Deanna at the help phone line may have solved the problem. Or not. At least the re-delivery confirmation number is only eleven digits.

Lately the benefits of online shopping seem offset by the time suck of dealing with the post office, UPS, FedEx, Amazon, and the apartment management office that sometimes receives my packages and grudgingly releases them to me. I even had to track down the delivery of postage stamps purchased through the online postal gift store. They are really cute stamps, though, from one of my very favorite picture books, Ezra Jack Keats' The Snowy Day.

E-gift-giving seems cold and impersonal. Yet there's a lot of family togetherness during all those phone calls asking "did the gifts for Duane arrive?" The group texting about "who sent the cute hippo onesie?," was as heart-warming as caroling with cocoa.  Amazon's failure to send the witty gift enclosure forced me to speak one-to-one with a son about sentimental memories of Grandma Fritzi's joy of birdwatching.

The balance sheet was at work again when a thoughtful friend flagged me down to tell me my headlight was out, probably sparing me a traffic stop and warning or ticket. On the downside, after I talked to her the Buick side window would not go all the way back up. On the upside, we've come out of a very cold snap for Texas. My Christmas bonus will go for window repair.

Stopped at AutoZone on the way home to get the headlight bulb. Sometimes the salesperson will help with the bulb replacement, but the guys were in a hurry to eat their po'boys. Plus, it was dark. Early this morning I tried my Helen Reddy imitation again, but the bulb would not fit. Arrgh.

Did those guys sell me the wrong bulb? No, they did not, and AutoZone opens at eight on Saturday morning. An extremely polite salesperson tactfully explained that I was trying to put the low-beam bulb in the high-beam gizmo. And the high-beam bulb did not need to be replaced. By 8:10 all lights were working, and my day was on the positive incline.

Which brings me to the Blue Cheese Story, but not the bleu cheese story. One of my sons, who shall remain nameless, lives in a really nice house formerly home to a tenant who left abruptly with some unfinished financial business. It's always nice to NOT be the person with whom the IRS wants to chat, or the sheriff when they are standing on your porch.

The former resident's generous great-auntie Louise placed an online gift order of Newton, Iowa's famous Maytag blue cheese for her great niece. But, wait, auntie didn't know about the recent skedaddle. So a big misdirected box was left on the porch:

The simple thing would have been to just open it and see what was inside, but none of us were fond of blue cheese. So my son called UPS and spent over half an hour convincing them to send a driver to retrieve the blue cheese. Which they did, but they weren't pleased. When you need them, where are the porch pirates and thieves?


© 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

Gong Show

Even my meditation app hates me. 

Grateful I am that my employer is focused on employee wellness. Tuesday lunch break is given over to mindfulness meditation with instructor Janet Sandman. Other days I make a little meditation time in my office using the Insight Timer app on my phone. It's free. It gongs, and gurgles with falling rainwater. And then I still have time for my sandwich.

Between phone settings and meditation app settings I scored a fail, not to be judgmental, but there it is. I was just sitting and breathing and counting "one" on each exhale and gently reminding my shoulders to stay away from my ears and kindly escorting thoughts out through the back hall to the fire exit over and over and over and the water was gurgling and gurgling and how could this only be fifteen minutes? I finally left my breathing to discover that the final gong setting was unspecified. It was never going to ding, no matter how long I set my thoughts on tiny origami boats and floated them off down the stream. Infinitely treading water while the sunburned lifesaving instructor in the Speedo quits without giving two weeks notice, clears out his locker, and drives off in the VW microbus, spewing gravel in the parking lot.


Looking out the window at the gorgeous yellow ginkgo leaves I gulp my sandwich. Thoughts onward CASCADE® 

Do. Or do not. There is no try.

No matter what, my dishwasher declines to open the detergent dispenser at the appointed time in the cycle. I try creative visualizations of suds bubbling out of the cave from behind the magic door. Letting go of expectations for the appliance did not work any better than attempts to chisel the solidified detergent with a kitchen knife.

In the busy household with young kids the sound of major home appliances running was more constant than breath or heartbeat. Wash to rinse to spin was my inner timer. App was short for appliance! The dishwasher was my chuckling spiritual guide.

Preschoolers pause for a mini-moment of breath awareness. Breathe in slowly through your nose smelling a flower. 1 - 2 - 3. Breathe out slowly through your mouth blowing a bubble. 1 - 2 - 3.

Leaving the mental default habits of enumerating, naming, judging, anticipating to become one with the cosmos, right? Wrong. The computer declines to send jobs to the physical printer right beside me on the desk. It wants to send the jobs to a cosmic printer in the clouds. GONG! Gong! Gongggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg


Recent library acquisitions:

  

And just fyi, Chuck Barris was the host of "The Gong Show." Also, the lifesaving instructor was named Merle.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Me & Paula Dean quiche

Me & Bobby McGee

Kris Kristofferson

Busted flat in Baton Rouge
Waitin' for the train
Feelin' nearly faded as my jeans
Bobby thumbed a diesel down
Just before it rained
Rode us all the way to New Orleans
I pulled my harpoon out of my dirty red bandanna
And was playing soft
While Bobby sang the blues
With them windshield wipers slappin' time
I was holdin' Bobby's hand in mine
We sang every song that driver knew
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose
Nothin' ain't worth nothin' but it's free
Feelin' good was easy, Lord,
When he sang the blues
And feelin' good was good enough for me
Good enough for me and Bobby McGee
From Kentucky coal mines
To the California sun
Bobby shared the secrets of my soul
Through all kinds of weather, Lord
Through everything I done
Bobby baby…

Spinach and Bacon Quiche

Total Time:
1 hr
Prep:
15 min
Cook:
45 min
Yield:8 servings
Level:Easy
Ingredients
6 large eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
Salt and pepper
2 cups chopped fresh baby spinach, packed
1 pound bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 1/2 cups shredded Swiss cheese
1 (9-inch) refrigerated pie crust, fitted to a 9-inch glass pie plate
Directions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Combine the eggs, cream, salt, and pepper in a food processor or blender. Layer the spinach, bacon, and cheese in the bottom of the pie crust, then pour the egg mixture on top. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes until the egg mixture is set. Cut into 8 wedges.
Recipe courtesy of Paula Deen

© 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

The eyes have it -- disasters in simpler times

Fritzi and I saw "Airport" at the West O Drive-In during the summer of 1971. Mom must have read Arthur Hailey's novel. At least in my memory we sat in the '54 Chevy, but it might have been that awful Ford Fairlane.

Putting together a collage about my day picking up my new eyeglasses and shopping for wedding mother attire in Macy's at our formerly bustling mall, I had a vivid flashback to the snow-plowing runway scenes with George Kennedy chomping a cigar. Lights mark the edge of the tarmac. D.O. Guerrero, Dean Martin, and Jacqueline Bissett collide in the aisle of the doomed 707. A special evening with my mom before the ugly mother-daughter battles of late adolescence...when the rain began we continued to watch the outdoor movie with windshield wipers..

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Judi, Morticia, Camilla and Eliza

The search for appropriate wedding attire for MOG 3.0 continues with my team of advisers. Much like a search for the perfect sofa, I find so many nominees for the Most Hideous Ever award.

This week I cataloged the hardcover and downloadable editions of Game of Crowns : Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne, by Christopher Anderson, and scanned the color plates for guidance in my quest. 

Why can't the whole wedding party just wear tie-dyed t-shirts? I could hot glue sequins beads...

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

The medium is the meditation

Traveling a great circle route I find my home anew.  My new job pushes me off into other waters to fuel my creative needs. I'm in the flow, even if it is an eddy. Holding hands while treading water to stay afloat are childhood drawings on Howie's blueprint paper, environmental education solar-power cyanoprints, papercutting influences from around the globe, nature photography from Oak Point Nature Preserve, textile art, Photoshop junkies, and mental flipflop gymnastics.

And so, I take up my tiny scissors once again to cut paper patterns to make blueprints on fabric, getting my big fat knuckles stuck in the scissor handles in the process. The past few evenings have passed in a state of capital F flow, an alignment of challenge and intent focus, while renewing ability to make papercuts for a new purpose.

The treated fabric pieces arrived from Blueprints on Fabric. On my next sunny day off I'll make the first sunprint from a papercut pattern based on one of my insect photos.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.


© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Mushrooming out of control

• Met the mushroom Monday afternoon about four in big pot that holds a trumpet vine just leafing out. The roly-poly mushroom looked a lot like the ones I buy at the supermarket but I didn't have the nerve to taste it. 

Monday -- meet the mushroom 'neath the mint

• Tuesday evening Roly Poly was larger and splitting around the edges. The surface looked like layers of feathers.

• Wednesday evening I tried to see under the cap as Roly Poly stood up taller. I wavered between pulling the mushroom out to see it better, or letting it proceed through stages I didn't know.

 

• Vaguely hoping to find a way to make veggie ink prints of the mushroom cap, I stumbled upon spore printing.  Voila, Google! The supplies are budget-friendly:  paper, mushroom, Pyrex, patience, and AquaNet hairspray! True, I would have to interrupt the mushroom's progress. Also true, the spore print is not instantaneous. Thumb-twiddling and deep, cleansing breaths are necessary.

Mushroom interrupted

Can you find the snail?

• To make a spore print set cap on a piece of paper, and covering it with a bowl. Depending on your patience level, remove the bowl, and lift the cap off the paper in 2-24 hours. Spray the spore print with hairspray.

8 p.m.

7 a.m.

 First spore print 11 hours

 Second spore print just 1 hour.

Third spore print Thursday evening  (11 hours)

• After four days of rain, I should be able to find mushrooms for further spore print practice this weekend.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Sunny side up

To new possibilities in 2016!

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder