Self portrait with headache

© 2013-2019 Nancy L. Ruder

Time-shifters and singing crawdads

If you check out a library book today, it won't be due until Spring. When will Spring walk in and drop your book in the return slot? In a couple weeks, but beware, Spring, in its toga togs,  must pass the Ides of March first to slide any DVDs you have borrowed into the book drop. I bet even Brutus, whom you knew et tu, was sometimes tardy with his graphic novels.

The library will be open two evenings a week beginning this Tuesday. That's one hour sooner than necessary due to Daylight Saving Time. Going to work later on Tuesday adds more time for my annual vehicle inspection which is on some completely altered space-time continuum. I swear I just sat there in that grungy waiting room with its moisture-damaged Field & Stream magazines holding my "new" purse on my lap just a week or so back while my Buick was inspected.

Back behind the curtain with the man to whom you pay no attention, I was shifting time on behalf of the singing crawdads. Delia Owen's book, Where the Crawdads Sing, is in high demand with book club members. Our little library has fifteen patron requests for four copies. Et tu? Are you on queue?

Cue the crawdads!

Crawdad choir director

© 2013-2019 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

Motivational seekers

Nobody expected the flurries would stick or go on so long. The TV weather guys said there was a 10% chance of  waltzing snowflakes. How did each snowflake feel about getting up, lacing on those toe shoes and going to work knowing the gig might never happen? 

These are not the star snowflakes, mind you. They won't get the frozen sparkly glory. These are just the corps of interchangeable snowflakes making slightly over minimum wage. Did these random snowflakes ever get the overhead view of a June Taylor Dancers kaleidoscopic production to find their little roles in the big production?

Word rippled in drifts through our workplace. The boss and his #2 were outside sweeping the snow off our cars, cleaning our windshields for a safe drive home. How chilly awesome is that?  I felt appreciated and acknowledged. My personal life and safety seemed valued. I was amused by two men of a certain age out playing in the snow in the guise of cleaning our cars. 

Motivation is the unplanned theme of the week. Reading Payoff on lunch breaks. Listening to Norbert Leo Butz's terrific performance of Phil Knight's memoir, Shoe Dog, on my slow commutes.

What motivates me? Being able to get that big occasional view of the grand scheme and my place in it. Having my ideas acknowledged. Being in the loop. Verbal thanks.

Knight quotes General Patton several times, and this may be my long-term takeaway from the book:

'Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do

 and let them surprise you with the results.'

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Fir tree financials

Financial philosophical conflicts can rear their fire-breathing dragon jaws in marriages during the holidays. Financial manipulation in a relationship can be subtle at first and seem caring, sparing financial worries to a harried spouse. It might appear as penny-pinching prudence for young students and newly weds. It can masquerade as a political statement against blatant commercial excess.

But if it feels like a one-sided move to separate you from your family holiday traditions pay attention.  A victim likely feels ashamed and apologizes for spending deemed frivolous by the controlling person in the relationship.

Financial abuse may only be visible in the rear-view mirror. Objects may be much closer than they appear! I urge everyone to check out the financial abuse information at the website of the National Network to End Domestic Violence. Not all forms of domestic abuse are physical or violent, but the effects of financial manipulation can have long term impacts over generations.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Birds in the chimney, bats in the belfry

About the third or fifth time, slowly, very slowly surfacing from dreams, the sounds Activate Alarm System. 

Snuffle, scritch, metallic clink

flutter, scuffle, tumble clunk 

Thank heaven I passed all the online training modules for such emergencies!

A. Brain scrolls memory for a match:

1. Memory Hit Returned.
2. 1992. Birds in chimney.
3. Birds get loose in living room.

B. Sleep-fogged brain proposes Brilliant Plan of Action: 

1. Pull blanket over head.
2. Do not let toes touch floor.
3. Call in to work explaining rabid rodents holding hostage in apartment.

C. Brain runs Snooze/Reboot/Reject Protocol:

1. Alternate sensory filters added to search.
2. New memory hit.
3. Rattling crockpot lid on tomato veggie soup started before bedtime.

D. Awake brain Accepts Results/ Plan of Action B :

1. Suck it up.
2. Do not huddle in bunker.
3. Make sandwich to go with savory soup for lunch.
4. Walk boldly through cobwebs.

© 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

Overdue with shoes

Put the new designer shoe department in the fiction room, the nonfiction room by the fireplace, or upstairs in the periodicals room? Display artists ready to arrange spike heels on little gilded tables and atop the marble circulation desk. . . . .

They were going to overdo

overdo overdo

overdues overdues overdues

chug chug choo choo CHOO CHOO lotsa shoes lotsa shoes fancy shoes get the shoes lotsa shoes!

Jimmy Choo Jimmy Choo Jimmy Choo Whoo oo whoo! Whoo oo whoo!

I think I can I think I can I think I can I think I can I think I can get out of bed to

Hit the snooze hit the snooze hit the snooze hit the snooze hit the snooze hit the snooze

Gotta get
gotta get
gotta get
gotta get

wedding shoes
wedding shoes

Don't overdo

don't
overdo 



don't
over
do


No hat

no

HAT

No haaaattTT!

But you gotta know the territory!


OVERDUE OVERDUE Overdue Overdue

© 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

Another day, another donut

Work is on my mind. It keeps circling and surfacing, diving deep, getting mired, then bobbing up like the bloated drowning victim on the PBS detective series... Okay, maybe not bloated, but recurring.

I leave my job duties most days at the office, but the concept of work follows through waking and sleeping hours. Dreams of my first job, my worst job, my most inadequate moments as a classroom teacher take on an Escher repetition.

Jobs are not the same as work. I've never had a career, but I suspect a career is not the same as  a job. "Career" hints at a commitment to a profession and a reserved parking space. A "job" may or may not have the same type of commitment, and rarely rates the parking space. Over the years I've met some impressive people with enormous commitment to work that is often unpleasant, but who do it with grace and dignity. 

Facebook is full of photos of moms this week, and mothers deserves respect and gratitude. Parents aren't the only people out there changing diapers. I'm overwhelmed again at the excellent, patient, gracious care my father received in his dementia and decline.  The big-spirited woman with the sense of humor and personality plus who managed angry, bedridden Dad when he removed his soiled Depends and threw it across the room at the Clock of Vicious Time was working for more than a paycheck.

Way back just after the dinosaurs died out I read Studs Terkel's book Working for a Centennial College project. Decades later I come back to the quote, "Jobs are not big enough for people."

“Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.” 

“I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us, like the assembly-line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people.” 
― Studs Terkel, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do

I'm stewing on bullying and disrespect in the workplace after last week's racial profiling session, not just police officer to citizen, or boss to peon, but also between coworkers. Some people just never seem to get beyond middle school in their behavior!

In the Centennial College "Work Project" we discussed Protestant work ethic along with calling and vocation.  How do you think the idea and practice of a work ethic changed from the Greatest Generation through the Baby Boomers, and now the Millennials?

Cataloged Callings by Dave Isay today. It's subtitled "The purpose and passion of work".   Adding it to my must-read list along with David Shipler's Working Poor.

   


Tonight I'm saluting the work ethic of a young man with a passion for airplanes and a commitment to doing 100% at every single task. I am so proud of the person he's become.


© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Storage, screams, and boredom

Monday:  My life is a mess, or my apartment is a mess. Well, maybe it's the bathroom that's a mess ... especially the counter with all those pill bottles and hair goo and mouthwash that won't fit in the drawers or in the cabinet below the lavatory.  Maybe Target holds the answer to my life.  Target is a mess with a leaking roof . Target has giant jellyfish catheter bags hanging from the ceiling in many departments and only two cashiers and the customers are getting properly pissed disgruntled. My life is looking better and the bathroom storage solution only cost $42.

Heavy Duty Drain Tarps Help Redirect Leaks From Ceiling Through A Drain Port.

Tuesday: Am I bored with my Breakfast Blog, or just bored with making breakfast? Why am I up to two mornings per week bribing myself with Einstein bagels to creep into the shower and get the day going? The employees at Einsteins know my name. Sometimes you want to go....

Wednesday a.m.: Yes, he is still there, the young/old person camping out under one of the thirty-seven High Five bridges, but now over on the east side of the 75 Expressway instead of the west.  The concrete supports create a sleeping berth and shelves for his/her belongings. I spy a cooler, a burgundy nylon sleeping bag, and maybe a boombox with my little eye.

Wednesday p.m.: I'm still not sure which bridge exactly, but I worry about the new resident rolling over in the night down the slope into traffic. What could be more of a deserted island than this spot you can't get to from here, you can't check out or ever leave. A half million of us weaving under and around and over the interchange everyday feel we can't get anywhere without moving through this place of his/her complete isolation.

Thursday: The periodicals room is screaming at 9:15 a.m. Librarian noir? 650 _0 $aHomicide investigation$xFiction. No, a computer back-up battery has died under a desk, oozing a chemical goo that ruins wood finish,  If the person under the High Five falls out of bed who will hear the scream? I buy cream-of-wheat and taco shells at Tom Thumb, then store myself on my ledge.

Cheers!

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Primed for disappointment

We have been seriously facilitated lately, with the pyramid of accountability, communication skills, Glenn Parker's Team Players, and True Colors. Are you most:

• stressed by appearing incompetent?
• stressed by disharmony?
• stressed by disorganization?
• stressed by lack of excitement?
• stressed by forgetting to cancel free Amazon Prime trial before 30 days were up?

Just before the lunch break in the all day team-building session I realized I had missed the deadline to cancel my 30-day free Amazon Prime membership before being charged $99.99. Oops. Not sure I can make that membership a financial win. It would be better if Prime included a year of free socks to meet your every need. Amazon knows absolutely everything about me, so drones could deliver perfect socks to my front door. I hate buying socks! 

• Why do they cost so much? 
• Why can't they be more fun?
• Why are they never quite the right color? 
• Where is the mate?

What have I learned, besides the socks? I seem to be a private, planning, punctual, slow-processing cynical idealist, telephone-phobic contributing challenger uncomfortable with conflict, easily annoyed, amazingly curious but never bored, Put me in a closet and I will make art out of coat-hangers. Put me in the kitchen and I will use my knowledge of historic migrations with my appreciation of texture and color to make many interesting dishes, two-thirds of which will be edible, and 80% unrepeatable. Put me in a long departmental strategic planning meeting, and I will be unable to find a comfortable position on those chairs. Tell me I can't take notes, and I'll be itching for a fight. Don't hug me, and I won't hug you.

© 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

Teaching art uphill both ways

You can just check out right now with an x in this box [   ].
This post is a nightmare.

D'you have "Don't tell me what you dreamed last night!" tattooed on your neck right behind your ear? You can order the t-shirts, hoodies, and bumper stickers on-line.

I'm not saying I've got a technicolor dreamcoat, but all of a sudden the dream struggles teaching art became the real-life nightmare of managing the refugee crisis. My old counselor would advise the dream is never about Them. Dreams are always about You. For the moment, this dream meaning is the uphill struggle of the refugee crisis, and not so much about whether I am symbolically cleaning the paintbrushes of my life.

My teaching dreams often tumble from an almost-manageable classroom to an overwhelming slanted situation. I'm instructing from the pit of a sloped lecture hall, but more and more students keep arriving tardy through the doors at the top of the hall. They are unruly and loud, but the problem is my lack of amplification to deliver the art project instructions. We will be painting with poster paints and cheap brushes with the bristles all worn down. There's no way to distribute the papers and paints and brushes, especially with the continuing influx of students. We don't have enough tables, and the crowded children are beginning to bicker and wrestle. There's no time to explain the choices the students must make outlining shapes in their compositions. There's no procedure for cleaning the brushes or putting art in the drying racks, especially not before the school bus schedule begins. I didn't even have enough art smocks for all the kids. Nobody writes their name on their paper. I can smell the powdered tempera paints and the crumbling, faded construction paper. The sink is clogged again.

Oh, Lordy, we's all a gonna die. And, yes, we all are. That we ever get to make art or express ourselves is a miracle.

The refugee crisis is a recurring nightmare nearly as ancient as mankind. We are never prepared, supplied, able to communicate, or to handle the clean-up. We can't decide how to outline the shapes in dripping black with worn-out brushes.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Team-building breakfast challenge

Listening to Marilyn Johnson's  Lives In Ruins, an audiobook about modern day archaeologists, but my cd player is ejecting the discs at random times. This is not a relaxing addition to a morning commute in evil traffic. I'm feeling as disjointed as a Malaysian cave hobbit hominid. Still I caught most of the section about early humans' method of extracting bone grease to make pemmican. If pemmican did not require bone grease and dried meat jerky, it would be the perfect food to take when I host the fourth quarter team-building session on emotional intelligence next week.

The team-to-be-built is composed of nine environmental educators plus one emotional intelligence expert facilitator.

Budget: $20.00 (Coffee will be provided by venue)

Event: Morning meeting

Serving requirements:

1. Minimal waste, aka Zero Waste
2. Organics will be composted
3. Absolutely no individual serving packaging
4. Low carbon footprint
5. Reusable serving utensils 

Menu requirements:

1. Local
2. Vegetarian
3. Low salt
4. Low carb
5. Low refined sugar
6. Preferably untouched by human hands
7. No preservatives
8. Include antioxidants 
9. Unprocessed
10. Brain food
11. Tummy sustaining
12. Respecting all learning styles, especially the nibbler route to knowledge
13. There will be fruit

Personal goals

1. Mildly festive
2. Easy when awakened by alarm clock
3. Educational and/or entertaining
4. Visually appealing presentation
5. Jalapeno jack cheese 
6. Zero kelp/Zero kale
7. Slather on the cream cheese!

Obviously, no vending machine Hostess powdered sugar donuts in this ring of hell. Hunter-gatherers did not have Power Points.

FYI, I found some vegetarian pemmican recipes...

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Junior Woodpecker Training Camp

Pasta salad and Steph Kallos' new novel, Language Arts, in the park across from work made a lovely lunchtime today. Why does a one-hour lunch break seem so much less than twice as long as a half-hour gobble-and-go break? Did I spend that much time staring at the cicada exoskeleton on the back of the park bench, imagining a Twilight Zonesque what-if scenario? Giant insects climbing out of the dirt and up and up to enslave mere picnicking humans?

What camp counselor supervised the young woodpeckers? Get together at one tree to hammer, braid lanyards, raise the flag, and sing "On Top of Spaghetti"? Earn your Junior Woodpecker badge.

One redhead was doing the majority of the tapping work while the other four just flitted to nearby trees and occasionally clicked in.

Did I drowse? I just sat down, but I've got to run back to work.

 Just one mosquito bite to scratch, and hours to go before I sleep...

© 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

Old recycler learning new tricks

Does your grocery store have a collection point for clean grocery bags? Where is it? At the front of the store? Outside the door? Somewhere else?

Did you know you can probably recycle other kinds of clean, dry plastic bags and film, such as dry cleaner bags, at the same location?

Kroger #581

Tom Thumb #2554

We could collect some useful information and spread the word by posting photos like these with store names and numbers. That number is on your receipt, along with the address, phone, and probably the manager's name.

To be honest, I'm not exactly a hashtag kind of girl, but I hang out in grocery stores with my reusable shopping bags and my phone. Having a way to recycle the plastic film around the twelve-pack of Charmin constitutes a

MAJOR NEWS FLASH--DETAILS AT TEN! 

EXTRA, EXTRA, READ ALL ABOUT IT! FURTHER BULLETINS AS EVENTS WARRANT!  in my world. 

If your store is a collection point, take a picture, and post it in the comments. #plastic film recycling And thanks from Mother Earth.

Now I have to go build an ark.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Don't talk to me before nine

Enough with the personality trait, communication style, learning style, Briggs Myers, My True Color tests. Just give me a shirt printed with this warning:

Do not talk to me before nine.

Okay, maybe three shirts in different colors* so I don't have to do laundry every night. I like the ambiguity of not specifying a.m. or p.m. On the back of the shirt it should say:

Don't make me pick up the phone. 

         You know how to email.        

     You aren't Lindsey Graham.       

I love my job! I have my own cubicle. It's a grownup version of the cereal box fort at the breakfast table. I won't swipe the illustrations from this blogger, but do check them out.


*Cheerios yellow, Wheaties orange, Frosted Flakes blue







© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Survey Monkey

Hello. I am Fred the Survey Sock Monkey. This is my buddy Data Hippo. We want you to participate in our online survey created by the droopy-eyed blogger who usually breakfasts here. She threw us the wrench of responsibility, and trundled off to bed already. And yes, it isn't even eight o'clock! She was muttering about Cream of Wheat and learning curves.

It's possible that this link will take you to our probing primate pretest. Or not. It's a puzzle. If that didn't work try this.

This is a monkey puzzle tree growing at Oregon Gardens. No monkeys took my caps when I slept under it on Easter 2013.

© 2015 Nancy L. Ruder