Four out of five wheels agree

Next week it's bye-bye work-from-home-office and hello dining room. AND I get to move the nice office chair Staples delivered to save my back on week two or three of this adventure,to my personal computer desk for emails, bill-paying and Sims.

The past two weeks when I had some time for my favorite Sim, Portly Chartreuse, or the odd Sim couple of Scary-Hair Tammy and Joe Biden, I felt out of balance. Was it my life-work ratio? Lack of exercise? Unhappy chakras? Nagging knowledge of the not-yet-unloaded dishwasher? Or was my tired old Office Max chair about to throw me to the floor?

Several times I've turned the chair upside down to see if it was the culprit (being the least damning of conclusions).  I couldn't see a problem, so it must be a personal defect.

This evening I rolled the old chair out to the dining room in a switch with the Staples chair. Voila! Four out of five wheels sit on the floor. Rolling the chair around the smooth floor there's always one bucking bronco in the wheel bunch.

Hooray! I'm not unstable and imbalanced! Sure, I could get outside more, eat fruits and veggies, get back on the meditation routine... but mostly it's the chair that's off its rocker.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Bangs in the Time of Coronavirus

...

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

Weekending From Home #2 Takeaways

Solitude is not the same as loneliness.

"Use your time wisely" is not the same as productivity.

Sitting around the dining table listening to humorous survival stories of the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and WWII gave me powerful resource for this moment.

Creativity doesn't require a finished product.

Adaptation and change take a lot of energy, and sleep is a reasonable response.

Bacon is a powerful force for good. No Jedi required.

If I don't protect and take care of myself the people who love me are going to be seriously pissed off.

It's good to have a tire pressure/inflation kit in the trunk of the Buick.

Tastees:

1 lb. ground beef, not browned
1/2 cup water
2 T vinegar
1 t dry mustard
1/4 cup catsup
2 T horseradish sauce
1/4 t chili powder
(1 medium onion, chopped)
Ground black pepper

Worchestershire?

Mix together and cook 1 hour, uncovered. Serve on bun with sliced dill pickles. Inhale steam.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Who owns the zebra?

Like you, I've been home mostly working, but also watching, aware of even the slightest happening outside my window. When there's so little to see, we really want to see it! I haven't yet reached the desperate need to create a matrix to figure out the relationships of apartment dwellers in my small nook of the big rental complex, but know that day is approaching. In this Time of Curious Social Distancing you might want to answer the classic deduction puzzle linked below.

For now, I just have questions. So many questions:

• Why does Pacing Woman always wear saggy pants and who's she talking to on the phone?
• Where are the parents of the little boy playing in the big puddle? 
• Who orders Grub Hub from Panera, for heavens sake? I mean really, just make yourself a PBJ sandwich!
• If I go to the store to buy toilet paper will I ever get a parking space again? 
• Why does Day-Glo Wizard T-shirt Man eat all those pork rinds from the bicycle seller?
• Is the guy upstairs auditioning for All Star Wrestling with a kangaroo or just clog dancing? 
• What days of the week does Fleece Pajama Pants Man babysit the little girl who pretends she's driving the minivan? 
• How many days can Purple Polo Shirt Man spend topping up the fluids in his car?
• What's wrong with the German shepherd wearing the cone of shame?
• Will the Red-headed Girl's roommate succeed in taking away her car keys while she's "in this condition?" 
• Is Scrubs Gal with the red Ford Fiesta still caring for the elderly on the night shift in a nearby nursing home? I salute her!
• When will High School Drum Major practice his routine on the bank of the flood control canal again?

Short on statements:

• The classic Who Owns the Zebra puzzle is a series of statements. 
• A second test to try is READ EVERYTHING BEFORE DOING ANYTHING  

Nope. Still nobody twirling banners out there, but I keep watching for the return of the drum major.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Self portrait with headache

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Social media posts as picture postcards, just faster

Summer reading of the best kind--I got a postcard from my grandson in the mail from Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo. How awesome is that? Personal hand-printed mail that traveled across geographic space over ticking hours and minutes and days to land in my physical mailbox. Woo-hoo! Sting rays and bats and tigers, oh my!

I'm struggling with my lunch break reading of Gretchen McCulloch's consideration of social media linguistics, Because Internet.  I'm intrigued by our turbo-changing informal writing culture. My problem is keeping track of McCulloch's cohorts of internet and social media adopters: Old Internet People, Full Internet People, Semi Internet People, Post Internet People and Pre Internet People. Really, they just need catchier names. The important idea is that we are in an era of unprecedented informal written communication  activity. People who would never have picked up a pen or typed out a memo are communicating by text, tweet, and post. They are creating new ways to add intonation, layers of meaning, emphasis, breath pauses, and speech-mimicking spellings.

McCulloch compares Beatle George Harrison's postcards with brief messages and doodles mailed in the '70s with use of emoticons and emojis today. Brief informal written communication isn't new, but the number of people participating is vastly different. Doodles and tiny faces are just attempts to indicate mood in a tiny box for a message.

Across cohorts and generations we still have some gaps of interpretation and understanding. My "NEW fiction" may just indicate a special library shelving location, while my coworker takes it as a shouted criticism of her shelving efforts.

We may need to identify and acknowledge those internal critics, editors, and even mentors perched on our shoulders with red pens and twinkly star stickers. Who is grading us for spelling, punctuation, legibility, and turning in our work on time? How do we feel about what goes into our Permanent Record? On my shoulders sit toga-clad judges who happen to be my great-aunt Emma and Miss Helen Madsen from seventh grade English class.

I am often guilty of being too flip, too blunt, too esoteric in speech and writing. Social media is a complex Venn diagram of audiences -- those we have in mind when we post, those with access to the post now, those viewing the post in the unknown future, those lacking the Rosetta stone to unlock the meaning.

What about the sensory experience of texting or posting? I don't get the joy of twirling the display rack of color postcards  (5 for $1.00) in the corner of the souvenir shop. Across the generations I DO get the XOXOX hugs and kisses I received from my grandmothers via the U.S. mail.

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Sticking the dismount

It's been five years in this apartment, with plenty of odd experiences dealing with management. This is the first time I ever received a bad report card!

My plants aren't dead, I said. They are just resting up for spring. And the item I'm storing on the porch is the watering can to refresh the not-dead plants.

Between this blemish on my permanent record and my bum knee waking me to the realities of aging, I'm getting the urge to move on down to a ground level apartment.

Seemed like an old-time tv show sketch when three guys in blotchy coveralls started roller-painting the stair rail before I did my creaky descent to leave for work.

Thanks to Hugh "Lumpy" Brannum aka Mr. Green Jeans aka Bainter the Painter.


© 2013-2019 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

STEAM kit fever

If you have been living under a rock, which doesn't seem like such a bad choice some days, you might suppose STEAM kits are the carpet shampooers you used to rent at Hinky Dinky that left the rug all soggy. Spots would show back up day after next, more prominent, entrenched, and meaner than before.

My oldest called to ask the best way to deal with a spaghetti sauce stain on carpet. "Welcome to parenthood," I said. "Area rug," said my walking buddy.  Resolve not to be flip.

Apparently libraries need STEAM kits with an assembly of books, activities, DVDs, puzzles, games, and junior science equipment all on a basic science theme for patrons to check out. My views are somewhat tinged by many years of work with young children, and sleepless nights when one of the plastic chickens for the Fisher Price farm  flew the coop. None of that matters, and my current job is just to describe the contents of the kits by material types, subjects, sizes, media, vendor, price, and Dewey classification. And to pray that the pieces are all returned intact and on time!

My parents never did get the Nehi orange soda stain out of the ugly brown carpet, but they were STEAM parents. Howie and Fritz were engineers and children of the Thirties. They chose toys for us that were open-ended, extremely inexpensive, and encouraged creative use of materials. Dad would frequent the deep-discount table at the Toy Castle shop around the corner from his office, as a service to Santa.  Mom was all about open-ended creative constructions. They respected our solitary explorations, but were ready to share and support our curiosities and enthusiasms. They taught us creative reuse of materials, and solid construction techniques by example. Tonight I'm a bit teary and very grateful for my parents and their philosophy of child's play. They did not mistake entertainment for play.

Science: Prisms, rock collections, rock tumbler, gyroscopes, ant farm, butterfly nets, constellation projector, telescope, bug box, magnets, magnifying glass.
Technology: Dry cell battery, switch, and bulb, simple machines like pulleys, crystal radio, Mattel Vac-u-form with a Thingmaker converter, water rockets, hammers, screwdrivers, c-clamps, pliers, saw.
Engineering: Geodesic domes, Pinewood Derby race cars and track, Legos, basic wooden blocks, erector sets, straw connectors, tinker toys, a tree house.
Art: Graph paper, Prang watercolors, plenty of paper of all types and sizes, Eames House of Cards, original geometric Colorforms, fabric scraps, glow-in-the dark ink and paints, felt pens, mechanical pencils, kaleidoscopes, carbon paper, scissors that really cut.
Math: A five-dollar bill to purchase fireworks (nothing better for teaching mental math), Yahtzee, chalkboard, simple loom, another five-dollar bill to purchase four Christmas gifts, measuring cups and spoons, thermometers, tasks requiring folding.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

I contain multitudes : unhappy macnam

Many people on this ride have been wondering how to put the President in maintenance mode today. Never imagined I'd be turning on extra lights and peering through my bifocals to find "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus," in a stack of dusty CDs. While the chief executive is a whirling vortex of contradictions, the general sense of his messages sinks lower and lower.

On lunch break I started reading Ed Yong's book, I Contain Multitudes. It is much less upsetting to my innards to imagine my body full of whirling microbes than it is to listen to the latest news. The gut microbes are my friends. With this President, who needs enemies?

Walt Whitman's quote from "Song of Myself" inspired the book's title:

Do I contradict myself? 

Very well, then I contradict myself,

I am large, I contain multitudes.

On the gut scale between beneficial microbes and nauseating news there is the eerie experience of the remote I.T. contractor roaming around inside my work computer. I can watch the progress via a teeny tiny camera on the nose of a giant intestinal worm. Occasionally my physical effort is required to to reboot or type in a password. 

Are the billions of microbes within each of us the original I.T. department? Have they been making adjustments and corrections invisibly since we slithered from the cesspool?

I hold out small hope for Clem to say, "this is Worker speaking." If you don't know Firesign Theatre, it's not too late!

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Quinoa jumping, and the lunches are easy

Late to the party as usual, dabbling in the cult of Salad-in-a-Mason-Jar. Didn't know this was "a thing." Note to self: Spend more of my life surfing Pinterest.

Coworkers explained to me very slowly and slightly loud, in case I was a deaf elder or foreign speaker, that salads in jars were a make-ahead brown bagging life-changing revolution. Geez, and I thought they'd just melted all their Rubbermaid containers in the microwave.

Lunches. Break room. Tedium. Looming.

Target. Two dollar. One quart. Enlightenment?

If canning jars are the path, I'm willing to layer my ingredients according to the words of the wise who have gone before:  homemade lemon vinaigrette (*bonus pts. for spelling correctly without looking up), then chopped carrots, sugar snap peas, zucchini (*another spelling word), edamame, grape tomatoes, black olives, oven-broiled salmon, quinoa, lemon wedge, lettuce jammed in at the top.

Will I lose points if the Ball jar tips over in my lunch bag? Will Pinterest know I just had that 1/2 cup of quinoa in the back of the cupboard left from some other culinary experiment? How many days before my little apartment stops smelling like smoky broiled salmon? (* if you guessed more than two)

Findings:

1. A quart of salad is a lot of chewing.
2. Salmon is worth the trouble.
3. Dumping a quart of salad onto a plate is a risky business.
4. Tomatoes roll across the floor leaving a vinaigrette trail.
5. Healthy quinoa jumps all over like particles in a physics super collider info-graphic.
6. Clean-up on aisle three.
7. It's okay that I didn't keep all the canning jars from my ancestors' cellars.
8. Looking forward to a boring old ham and cheese sandwich tomorrow.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Marty McFly in a power necktie?

• Skateboard? Check
• Using iPhone? Check
• Whipping and gliding around the corner and down the street in front of my old-timey Buick? Check
• GQ model hair? Check
• Dress shirt, slacks, and necktie? Check
• Orange shoes? Check
• Reducing ozone-forming emissions? Check

 

Tomorrow will be an orange air quality day, so Arlo the armadillo is warning us about ozone and skateboarding and texting while commuting.suggesting alternate transportation modes. In his dreams Arlo is Marty McFly's grandson 

In my dreams I'm home already after a clogless commute, flipping through the pages of AARP magazine past Michael J. Fox to the crossword puzzle. The library just received the book: AgeProof: Living Longer Without Running Out of Money or Breaking a Hip. Why isn't this a graphic novel? I thought it was by Roz Chast, but it's by Jean Chatzky.

If you must commute tomorrow, B. Goode.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Going over the falls in a barrel

Juggling Deepak Chopra, cosmic consciousness, OCLC, and disturbances in the Force. Having bees live in your head is not the same as having ants invade your apartment. Only one of these things crawls all around your shower curtain!

What are the proper subject headings and Dewey decimal assignment for a book about cosmic consciousness? OCLC WorldCat suggested "Reality" and 111.0. But what about time and space, mind and body, energy, matter, quantum physics, spirituality, cosmology, rainbows, electricity, not to mention the 1901 PanAmerican Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y.?

The Exposition included President McKinley's assassination and Annie Taylor's barrel ride over Niagra Falls, plus the electrocution of the assassin and the rise of the Humane Society.  Margaret Creighton's book, The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City, presents an intriging, depressing, and surprisingly timely look at American attitudes and prejudices. It's not as compelling and creepy as Erik Larsen's Devil in the White City about the Chicago World's Fair, but still worth your time.

But what is cosmic consciousness? How to you get it? Is it contagious? Is there a cure? And where should the book be shelved?


© 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

Vocabulary study sheet

petulance Reluctance to admit the president-elect reminds you of the elderly irritable yippy-snappy Pekingese in the yard across the street from your grandma's house, you know, chained out there next to the tractor tire planter filled with red geraniums and barking at every kid walking past.

emoluments Beauty regimen slapping emojis all over your face to promote healthy, glowing skin tone in trying times.

authoritarian populism when the assistance principal in charge of vice pretends to be your friend in the hallway at dismissal bell.
accrue ac·crue  əˈkro͞o/
Accrued vacation pay is the amount of vacation time that an employee has earned as per a company's employee benefit policy, but which will likely be spoiled by high mountain cedar pollen counts. SEE sneeze into your elbow.

fake-snooze Waking up at 3:40 a.m. to worry about the vocabulary study sheet and current events quiz, but finally getting back to sleep around 4:50 a.m, but then the alarm sounds at six a.m. and you keep hitting the snooze button but not actually getting back to sleep.

I keep thinking he's fixing to sing that old Cub Scout song.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Thanksgiving losses, gains, and late hits

Tonight I'm thinking about my blog muse, and feeling very, very grateful for her encouragement to try the new-fangled concept of blogging back in '03. My dear friend Juliet, who shall remain nameless, thought I might enjoy trying a new creative outlet. She volunteered her early techie support, cheerleading, and the courage to read pretty much everything I sent out into the blogosphere. From this distance it's clear we were new friends then, just a couple steps up from acquaintances, what with "friending" not even a THING yet in that primitive era.

Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday having won that title when the Fourth of July became too nerve-wracking as a mom. All Thanksgiving asks is that we spend some time in mindfulness and gratitude. Everything else is gravy.

Thanksgiving does not insist on family, togetherness, football on tv, front yard football leading to dislocated collarbones, long-distance travel, TSA security checks, belief in the Pilgrims/Indians legend, agreement about cranberry or stuffing recipes, aprons, crockpots, brining, yams, family storytelling, or table decorations crafted by children out of toilet paper tubes. Family storytelling is preferrable to political arguments, though.

Over a lifetime I've observed Thanksgiving in many roles. I've been the mother, the child, the grandchild, the grandma, the host, the guest, the cook, the communication hub, the in-law, the parent without custody for the holiday, the parade balloon, the quarterback sack, all alone in nature, the charity case, the hospital kitchen worker, the sandwich generation caregiver, the griever, the teacher, the listener, the organizer, the raker, the pitted black olive thief, and the recorder.

The first Thanksgiving after losing a parent will be difficult, Dear. The pieces don't fit, the floor seems slanted, all conventions are off, but the family stories  bubble up from a long-plugged well. It's all good. The thoughts of many will be with you and your family. I'm thankful for you.


© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

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

Forty stories

 "Vertiginous" is the word Lonely Planet uses for the 654 steps down to the Grotta di Nettuno. The cave at the bottom is totally worth the descent, as are the views during the many rest breaks on the trip back up. I want to thank my heart, lungs, and legs for joining me on this experience. I especially want to thank the dear friends who lagged behind keeping watch in case they had to drag me part of the way!

  

A little dog barked from the boat.

Definitely Whoville.

Nearing the grotto entrance

Rainbow rock at the gathering point for tour.

 
Cave photos are challenging with low light and spatial ambiguities. These are the "keepers" of my batch. The shot of Aladdin did not turn out!

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Demented emoticons drive dump trucks

:-)


Teeny tiny Tonkas queue to bring loads of itty bitty problems and catalog snarls to dump across my desk and keyboard. What to I do but give a demented emoticon smile and nod and thank the library gods for catalog maintenance job security?

So many codes of happy faces and smileys and Munch's "Scream" emojis filling up our brains -- I bet that was the space where the Polynesians stored their star navigation knowledge.

Grandma used to sign her birthday cards "X O X", probably my introduction to symbols. Hugs and kisses from Grandma were loaded with flavors, scents, sounds, along with the hugs.  I thought understanding the symbols meant I was reading.

If you are happy and you know it, use your thumbs to type text messages. Yes, your old thumbs can learn new tricks. The piling on of cataloging weirdness will abate. Then we will all dot i with pinky-purple hearts and smiles.

 I'm so happy I could cry listening to The House at the Edge of Night audiobook. 

:-)

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

It started at the end of May

Often noting the month of acquisition on library materials, I write month-'year. So May was 5-16. Right? Right.

Much as I can't make Excel dance through hoops to repeat or generate a sequence, I can't get my brain to stop doing the month-year jig.

So for half of June I kept writing 6-17, then backing up to correct to 6-16. By the end of the month I got my head straight, just in time for July.

7-18 was wrongo, wrongo! The oft-reinforced error was gaining strength and momentum, but I almost broke its will by the anniversary of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon on Janice's birthday in 1969.

Then it was August and Alan Shepard used a six-iron on my mental lunar landscape. 8-19 is not correct, but it's difficult to stop writing it on the labels.

When I get back from Sardinia I'll probably write 9- ? ...Maybe I will finally break the habit!

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder