Having a wonderful time. Wish you were six feet from here.

Where will I be these next few days? Sadly not with my newest pandemic grandbaby and his parents in D.C.  Not with my first pandemic grandbaby either. These are strange, travel-free vacation days, but I'm ridiculously excited about my upcoming time off. 

"Don't worry that I have COVID if you don't see me around," I told the woman in the next office. "Just tell people I'm on a Buddhist silent retreat," I joked to the gal at the CIRC desk. We were wearing masks and talking through Plexiglass, plus neither of us hear as well as we used to. No surprise she thought I was going nudist skydiving.  

Bought some little fifty cent easy-open cans of pork and beans. Nothing says vacation as much as sitting on a rock and eating cold beans for breakfast. Except maybe dry Cheerios and Tang in Dixie cups.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Harrowing haircuts

... or Fiskars and sickles. We visited Harold Warp's Pioneer Village in Minden, Nebraska a few times as kids, and wandered through the huge shed of farm implements. I was a city kid in a rural state. As a mom I was great with all the types of railroad cars and different trucks, plus the dinosaurs (who mostly have different names now). I even knew my logging and construction vehicles, but I hadsome sort of block with the farm implements. Old McDonald had a tractor, EIEIO, was as far as I went.

Somewhere in my hundreds of untitled, unidentified scan files there's a classic Christmas letter my mom received from her high school friend who stayed on the farm. The friend's husband dropped the harrow on his foot, but his wife could not drive a stick shift. So the farmer had to drive himself to the hospital. When the going gets tough, the tough heave the harrow off their foot and put pedal to the metal.

One of my most vivid memories from teaching summer art programs was the girl who showed up for performance day (in August in Dallas) in her green velvet Christmas dress. She had played connect-the-dots of the mosquito bites on her legs with black Sharpie marker. And she had cut her own hair so it looked a cornfield with rows of stubble, thankfully not when I was handing our the Fiskars scissors. I have been leaning toward the same style. It's so hard to resist the Fiskars when my bangs are in my eyes. 

Thanks, Wikipedia for this image of the agricultural tool.



Brush up on your farm implements here at Toy Tractor Times.

Paintings links to click on while you are NOT cutting your hair:

"Brush Harrow" by Winslow Homer link
"Reaper" by Eastman Johnson link
Van Gogh's "Wheatfield with a Reaper" link
"The Sower" by Jean-Francois Millet for Nebraskans link
"Harvesters" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder link
Thomas Hart Benton's "Ploughing it Under" link

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Self-quarantined for bad attitude

The wind picked up while I was on one of my Easter family Skype sessions, but the real chiller blasts hit in the middle of the night. Beer cans kept rolling and rattling around the parking lot. Of course, I had a coughing attack and sore throat, signalling the end. Back to sleep, one of the smoke detectors had a freak-out for no reason.

I was still staring at the cup of blah coffee when the maintenance guy left the note on my door. A person in our apartment community ... quarantined ... proximity... wash hands. Oh, crap. Even though my sinuses were protesting the forty degree temperature drop, I clearly needed to get out in the sun on what was likely to be my last day. AND I hope I cough as LOUD as the couple upstairs tromps in their apartment!

Texas bluebonnets helped some, as did a Coke from Sonic, but my grumpiness was still high as my temp was sub-normal. 

Back home I managed to reread the apartment notice. "...a member of our community has been directed to self-quarantine because they may have come  in close proximity to a person that tested positive for the COVID-19. This is a precautionary measure and does not mean that they have or will develop COVID-19." In other words, keep staying home, wash your hands, and don't freak out. Yes, somebody may get sick, but this is actually better news than my usual imaginings, and the action steps are still the same. Plus, I have plenty of canned low-sodium black beans and Minute Rice.

So I just took a nap.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

My tails of woe-lets

My problems are too little to be capital W Woes.  They are just woe-lets. Therefore, my tales of woe are just tails of woe-lets, especially since the doctor asked me to draw a spiral, but I thought she said spider. Well, sure, I can draw a spider, but the real problem is the ants.



What ants? The tiny ants displaced and irritable about the foundation repairs to the apartment building.

Hmm. The doctor made notes on the chart, and scheduled a hearing test, even though I have a vision appointment next week between the mammogram and the dermatologist.

  

I can draw spirals on the ends of my toes to look like the tails of woeful piglets. It's not so easy, though, to take toe self-photos of those tails of woe-lets.

   

The front end of a pig looks like a snorting button, but the tail end is a spiral in a circle. The best diagnosis is I've forgotten my problems by writing my petty piggy toe woes.

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

A leaf is to catch with a stick

First thing on a walk is to find a very useful stick. A stick is to imitate old relatives with canes. A stick is to poke and scratch the sand. A stick is useful for pointing grown-ups where to look. It is very good for fling-flanging about in the air.

A leaf passing by in time is for catching with a stick. A pinecone is difficult to catch. A stick is for emphasis when telling Daddy to find a rock to throw in the lake. A lake, of course, is for throwing rocks into.

Picnicked on my lunch break watching a little boy and two grown-ups select sticks for hiking and for retrieving tennis balls from the creek. The perfect stick was elusive. "Look, Dad! I upgraded my stick!" Easy to download and install.

With thanks to Antoinette Portis, Ruth Krauss, and Maurice Sendak.

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Signs are up at the water walk

Stopped over at the Environmental Ed.  Center to check on the water walk signs. Sure I was procrastinating going to Walmart for Swiffer Wet and Swiffer Dry, Tide, and t.p., but still, I wanted to know if the signs would be up for my granddaughter's arrival.

The messages are clear, if brief. The design is cohesive and child-friendly. I like that many of the photos were taken at the site.  I continue to hope for a future phase to include a kiosk with more detailed explanations for adult visitors.

Sometime this fall a big guy named Herbie will be installed.

And yes, I forgot the Swiffer Dry. But I got three $1.00 mums for the balcony pots.


© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder

Heavenly IT

A shortage of stars is preventing me from rating the audiobook of George Saunder's Lincoln in the Bardo. It is like nothing I ever experienced before, except that it is a type of collage. It is radically original and completely realized. If I could have listened straight through I would have, but 7.5 hours far exceeds my commute.

Nearing the end of the book there is much meeting of the minds in a cosmic intersection sense. Do not laugh, but it seemed appropriate that the remote I.T. techs had to take over and enter my computer to download an updated driver for my balky, stubborn HP printer. The cursor was possessed by an Other, and I could only listen for my few phone cues to log back in or unplug cords.

Energy! Light! Matter! Will! Acceptance! Plus Abraham Lincoln!



© 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

Petal dancer

On this, her nineteenth birthday, I celebrate my niece with blossoms and dance and petals, not for the first time. She is a poised, strong woman who acts on her convictions, lives comfortably in her own skin, and moves with style and grace. Clearly she is not related to my college freshman self!

 Geographical distance has limited our niece/aunt connection. Sad to say, when we were together it was often in high stress situations. I'm hoping she wasn't scarred for life.  She has an artist's eye, and I've always wanted to send her gifts for making art or of my creations. This year the gift is finished, but not yet in the mail.

Through sloggish commutes the audiobook, Art of Grace, by Sarah L. Kaufman plays on in the Buick. Its many good points are diluted through excessive repetition. Much as I love Cary Grant movies, is the actor really a saint?


Life maintenance tasks were shoved to the back burner this day off. Peony buds were blooming--

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Snail's breakfast after thunderstorms

Commanding cracks of thunder jolting me out of sleep and nearly out of bed sounded like titans were cracking Roc eggs on the peak of my roof at 2:30 a.m. Is Sinbad out and about?

The next wave of the storm had impressive examples of "rolling thunder", with the sound seeming to approach down a long tunnel then traveling on past me.  All my life I just thought "rolling thunder" was the same as "thunder rumbling". This was a completely different auditory experience. And since I was wide awake at three a.m. it was time to wonder which Indiana Jones movie had the giant marble rolling down the tunnel--or sewer--to squish our hero.  Or do all Indie movies have a variation of that theme? What was Operation Rolling Thunder? What was the Rolling Thunder Revue?

When would I get back to sleep? Shouldn't work be called off on account of scrambled Roc eggs?

Work was not called off, so the morning moved forward with the speed of stop-action clay animation filming. One might say it moved at a snail's pace. Stepping out of my car in the post-storm sunshine, the first snail seen on the sidewalk seemed to have only one eyestalk. The second snail had been stepped on, but was still moving. My boss moved it onto damp soil where it would surely die soon. The third snail was slowly stalking tiny insects on the damp wood armrest of a patio bench.

Are gastropod eyestalks retractable? And doesn't this snail's brocade jacket and pleated chiffon skirt look like a lovely mother-of-the-groom ensemble? I could slime up the aisle on the usher's arm.

Sinbad's crew discovering Roc eggs--By Columbia Pictures - Trailer for the film, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40492354

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

The 3 Bs

So very lucky to be employed in a beautiful place with books, blooms, and even benefits! Blossoms in early, middle, and late March this year in Highland Park.

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

Peering into the abyss

The MOB (mother of the bride) recommended this book to me, the MOG, a couple years back, and it blew my little mind. Turned out snails tango together on the edge of the tank. They are polymorphously perverse.

A snail is often out exploring the sidewalk on my short morning journey from car to workplace. At the end of the day going back to my car I feel sad if I find the snail squashed. So today I set down all my stuff and got almost to snail level. It was headed down into the sidewalk crack for breakfast.

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

© 2013-2016 Nancy L. Ruder

"as an ook cometh of a litel spyr"

It's Day Four of the acorn cap/pretty leaf gathering, and I'm feeling the effects. This workout involves walking around with a big tote bag selecting optimal acorn caps, bending down to pick and inspect, standing up and putting acorn cap in the bag. Repeat for one-half hour, with variations for sweet gum leaves and spikey balls, bur oak acorns, twigs with tiny yellow leaves attached, any red leaves, big leaves, variegated leaves, dry umbel stalks, bark, dry coneflower and Mexican hat flower tops, and hopefully no ants of any type. The follow-up/cool down portion of the workout requires a great many more bends, plus taking a Dustbuster to the office so Alice the cleaning lady will not get mad at me about the autumnal craft class prep mess.

Little kids will like making our nature "fantasy islands". The armless clothespin person on the paper plate island is not shouting, "De plane! De plane!" .

As for the little acorns from which those mighty oaks will grow, I report the following conversation between a first grader and a pre-K student.

1st:  Is that noise bothering you?
Pre-K:  No.
1st:  It's not bothering me either. As you get older you don't hear stuff so well, and I'm seven.

The little girls proceeded to tell me their life stories which involved an island, Maui, but not a nature island on a paper plate sea. Then a little guy not much taller than the desk where I worked walked up and asked me, "So how're y'all doin'?"

I'm good. Darn good. Just a few aches and pains from my exercise program.

Eh? What's that you say? When you get older you don't hear stuff so well, and I'm....

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Weather and traffic on the 8s

Your 5 day forecast according to the kids at the felt board "weather tv studio" today. Yes, much of our weather is upside-down due to climate change, flipping magnetic poles, or felt board challenges. I especially like the purple octopus tentacle winds on the East Coast.

Beware the bunny rabbit mashed potato popcorn cloud formations and the wintry mix on roadways.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Bandannas on the line

It was so very lovely, breezy, and cool at 9:30 this morning the mommies and nannies were stunned. It wasn't even 90 degrees! We had to get the kids outside, so that's where I set up the craft and activities.

Our playful theme was "Love YOUR Water", or how even little kids can enjoy, protect, and conserve water, and learn nearly everything they'll ever need to know, all at the same time. That was why I strung up the low clothesline, set out the tubs of sudsy and clean water, and the baskets of clothespins and bandannas.

Water play is a huge topic in early childhood and nature education. We all agree that kids need to play with water. Recirculating water play features for outdoor classrooms are expensive, use electricity, and are prone to breaking at the first dump of sand into the works. But an outdoor water education experience can keep it simple.

Little kids need to have sensory water experiences, so get your checklist of goals and objectives:

• Gross motor scooping/pouring time
• Early math measuring time
• Opposite wet and dry moments
• Fine motor strengthening activities with  hand-wringing and finger-pinching
• Language development describing all the things water can do or be
• Kids need to understand cause and effect. What happens if you flush a toy down the toilet?
• They need to gain an understanding of time. If you wear your shoes into the puddles they will be soggy for a long time. If you water paint with brushes on the sidewalk in the summer, your "art" will dry and disappear in a minute. How long does ice take to thaw?
• If your grandma takes you to the car wash, but forgets to roll up the windows, you will remember this vividly your whole life even though you forget that's the day your baby brother was born. 
• Almost as long as you remember the time Daddy ran the mower over the sprinkler and garden hose and said those bad words. Mad, sad, glad!
• You need to feel the shoulder motions of dropping, thunking, hurling, and skipping stones of different weights into the pond.
• And the sensations of wading barefoot or puddle-hopping in big boots.
• Prediction and comparison--What will sink? What will float?
• Before and after sequence of clean and dirty. Shampoo, rinse, repeat!
• Kids need chances to be a helper washing dishes, cleaning windows.
• Kids want to experience personal power turning faucets ON and OFF. 
• Controlling impulses to turn the faucet OFF while brushing teeth.
• Water dilutes paints and kids can experiment with saturation, light and dark
• Sequence--A storm is a story with beginning, middle, end.
• Rhythm--rain drops can make a rhythm. 
• Working through fears during a storm with wind and clouds, lightning and thunder, rain and hail.
• Cycle--of precipitation, evaporation, condensation.
• Coordination required to drink from a fountain or a hose.
• Motions of stirring, spiraling, swirling down the drain.
• Planning ahead with raincoats, boots, and umbrellas.
• Joy and wonder! The beauty of iridescent soap bubbles and rainbows.
• The OM of concentric ripples on the pond.
• The experience of thirst.
• The smell of rain.

And so the kids plunged the bright bandannas into the purple tub of sudsy water, then rinsed them in the blue tub of clean water. Using the alligator pinch clothespins to hang bandannas on the line was a new skill to learn. The dollar bandannas seemed to glow as they fluttered in the breeze. The kids were anxious for the bandannas to dry so they could unpin them and start the process again. The grownups savored the rare cool August breeze.

Meanwhile across the patio kids were experimenting with stones, shells, leaves, bark, and plastic Easter eggs in a galvanized tub. They were developing their focus and intention to find just how hard you should heave the rock so the splash will soak your socks.

We were all starting to feel groovy, reminiscing about clotheslines, hand-washing pantyhose with Woolite, and car caravans across Iowa with CB radios. What a magical hour of curiosity and wonder and learning.


© 2013-2015 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

Belt jam

Glad to report the midnight belt jam was not on toast with an egg, sunny side up. The belt jam was on the baggage carousel at Love Field the one time checking my suitcase seemed like a good idea. Wrong-O! It was amazing how long stoic exhausted travelers stared at the pop-up chute of baggage claim where nothing, absolutely nothing happened. An overhead voice kept announcing that the last bags from the St. Louis flight #200 would be removed from the carousel, even though only three bags from the flight had ever appeared. 

On my first ever "business trip" I was sent home to Nebraska. That's way better than Gaylord, Disney, or Las Vegas, but it came with a cargo hold filled with old memories and personal baggage. By the numbers:

• Take-offs--5
• Landings--also 5 fortunately
• Beverage services--5 (zero spills)
• In the event of a water landing--5 (Why do those yellow vests look like they were designed by Dan Piraro?)
• Shuttle rides chatting with strangers through corn and soybean fields--2 (one with adequate a/c, one without)
• Minutes of public speaking--5 (which seemed much longer in Mrs. Walker's 9th grade speech class, and did not get me through all my slides)
• Hours wearing wet, muddy, gravel-filled shoes--8
• Breaths of dangerous aerosol bug spray--countless
• Mosquito bites--2
• Situations feeling inappropriately attired--4 
• Participants expressing envy of my "Nebraska--the good life" t-shirt--15
• Disorientation reading t-shirt in mirror and wondering about Aksarben racetrack--brief
• Lost room key--1
• Formal presentations--9
• Group exercises and discussions--10 plus or minus
• Informal group conversations over meals and breaks--17 plus or minus
• Recalling childhood memories as part of program--3
• Hours recalling memories from my life spent within sixty miles of the conference site--32-50 (obviously overlapping)
• Hours for restoring myself alone in nature--not nearly enough, about 6, but feeling stressed that I SHOULD be mingling and SHARING and REACHING OUT.
• Receipts saved--8
• Weird coincidental acquaintances--2, being Janice Herbek of Hastings, and the Rose family of First Plymouth
• Mentions of damage done to the brain by cortisol stress chemical--4 
• Oh Wow Moments--12

The spiderwebs and damselflies were worth the whole conference, even the belt jam. Shimmering CDs were hanging in all the sun speckles in the forest, except they were not CDs. I'd never seen webs like this. What made them? Only the bountiful poison ivy kept me from going off-trail.

Damselflies, oh my!!! How did I miss these as a kid? Jewel-tone blues and turquoises with deep black wings taunted me on our NO-CAMERAS-SENSES-ONLY silent hike. The hike was an Oh Wow experience, but I was desperate to record my sightings!

Don't tell. Stealth photo on silent hike.

 

 

Not 100% sure about the ID, but the blue ones seem to be the boys and the dark winged with white spot the girls of the Ebony Jewelwing family. From Wikipedia:

Explanation of Names

CALOPTERYX: from the Greek "kalos" (beautiful) + "pteron" (wing or feather)

MACULATA: from the Latin "macula" (a spot) - a reference to the white spot near the tip of the female's wing

And the most amazing creature of the trip was this improbable spider:

  

   

 Again from Wikipedia:

Micrathena gracilis is a spider in the family Araneidae (orb-weavers), commonly known as the spined micrathena. This spider spins a moderately large (can be 30 cm (11.81 in) or more across), very tightly coiled web, often in wooded or brushy areas. Some call it the "CD spider" because its webs can make it appear as though there are compact discs hanging from the trees. It is completely harmless to humans.

© 2013-2015 Nancy L. Ruder