Building a better mousetrap

Pounding nails into a bar of soap while chattering with my dad is such an early sensory memory.  The hammer head was small and green. The soap was old and hard, but I could smell it and the sawdust on the workbench. What was Dad building?  "A project."

Dad would say if I "built a better mousetrap the world would beat a path to my door."  I was little.  Not so sure the world beating a path was a good thing! Heck, I could barely reach the doorknob standing on tiptoe. Mom insisted I not open the door to strangers.

We are devising library rodent wildlife management plans at work. By "we", I don't actually mean me.  I like Congress better than rodents, although I wouldn't want to remove either of them from a trap.

These widdle library mice are not the characters from picture books. They do not wear ballet slippers, or visit their country cousin. They haven't gnawed through the ropes to free a lion. They don't count or mix colors of paints.

The are big dang rodents displaced by the demolition of most of our building. They found the gingerbread house in the storytime room. It's the scary Rat King from The Nutcracker, but with a trail of rodent poop.

This amazing gingerbread Capitol is from Windows Catering Company.  They have a White House, too.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Cocoa, Cinque Terre, and the Corner Bakery combo

Again this year I did not kiss Billy Crystal at midnight, although I'm sad that Nora Ephron left us in 2012. Instead I piled on the quilts, drank cocoa, and stayed up late reading Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins, way past eight p.m.  I drifted away in a happy dream where iridescent hummingbirds towed congressional representatives and senators to happy rainbow compromise with pink satin ribbons.  It seemed so real!

Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins also seems so real and wonderful. I loved being sucked into all the story lines and movie pitches. And when the iridescent hummingbirds bring me a Very Big Check, I will go to Cinque Terre to hike and write my memoirs. I will stay at the Hotel Adequate View for sure.

Had lunch with long-time friends at Corner Bakery.  My walking buddy claims this is our annual New Year's tradition.  I'm embarrassed to admit if it is our tradition I don't recall. Read back through my blog entries from a year ago, and found no Corner Bakery New Year's.

There's something profoundly anchoring about a tradition so unblogworthy. I rely heavily on that friendship, that comfort of the known, that hesitationless panini combo. The routine is so consistent that the only decision is whether to start walking from her home or mine.

Two years ago my sister and I brought Dad to live out his days in Plano, Texas. One year ago, Dad was entering his final downhill slide. Eight years ago my mother was being transported to Mayo Clinic. I did not know I'd just seen her for the last time.

January is a tough month.  I look to the ceiling and see cobwebs that date back to the dawn of the modern era. The hummingbirds fly in with ribbons, not cobwebs.

There was about a year and a half after Mom died when Dad still had most of his wits.  He followed my interests in photography and hummingbirds and spiders.  He could still connect those interests with our family tradition of exchanging Christmas tree ornaments. He was not yet in the toddler self-centered dementia. He could still plan ahead.

I cherish the cloisonne hummingbird ornaments he ordered from a museum catalog that year knowing how much I would like them.  The wonderful spider pin he gave me has a broken clasp, but there's a silken web leading to an alert mind and a man with whom I'd shared every birthday.

Yes, January is a rough month. Good friends are the ribbons and webs that keep me together. And I recommend the poblano fresco sandwich with roast beef.


© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Na na na na Hey hey hey Goodbye

Neither gnomes, nor gnats, nor naugahyde will adorn the preschoolers' gift to their lead teacher, so you mightn't have expected the knife, knots, and knitting. Preschoolers can't give a gift of nothing to their teacher, so in the handmade spirit we have made a box of Nn. Naturally, the motives are twofold.

1. The students might learn something about the "Nn" sound.
2. This project will cost nada, nil, nothing, zip.  (Preschoolers often confuse N and Z)

The inspiration was part nasal exasperation. Our class is a championship caliber nose-picking team, no matter what measures we've take.

Our class rabbit is named Norton, so he's the star of the Nn box.

Having taught some of the kids to "turn sevens into stars", a few turned that back on me by refusing to practice writing numbers or letters. It's stars and only stars from morning until night.

Our box of Nn is almost done. And it's a good thing the semester is almost done, too. Enjoy some noodles, but use your napkin!

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

On tree ornaments and sadness

Right after I shipped gift boxes to my sons I discovered The Gift of Nothing by Patrick McDonnell. Shipping a big box of nothing via UPS or USPS would cost less, but would my sons still know their mommy loves them?

Decorated my Christmas tree during odd moments this week, for the first time in two or three years.  Haven't felt very Christmassy during the years of tending to my dad. I opened the boxes of my mom's ornaments.  Many were decorations I'd made or purchased for her, just as many in my own collection were gifts from Mom. It was a tradition we loved sharing, marking special memories with tree ornaments.

Didn't open the boxes of decorations from my sons' childhoods this time as the tree was already full. That was before the horrors at the week's end.  Now I keep thinking of the mothers and grandmothers who won't get to collect tree ornaments marking the milestones of childhoods.


© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Suggestible

If you tell me I'm in a tsunami evacuation zone, my shoes will already seem wet. Mention, just FYI, that there have been no cougar sightings in a year and a half, and I'll spot one slinking at every turn of the trail.

Add to that a buddy who emails when she spots a bobcat on her driveway, and I can find a saber tooth tiger. And no, I don't want to go camping! Appearing large is the least of my problems.  Make noise!  So there I was singing "Frosty the Snowman" loud and off key on the self-guided nature interpretive trail at Willamette Mission State Park just north of Salem, Oregon on a dark and foggy Monday afternoon.














Except for the cougar possibility, this was a nice two and a half mile walk on level, soggy ground.  I saw the largest black cottonwood in the United States.

My National Geographic Book of Mammals says bobcats (aka wildcats) are shy, solitary, strong, and twice the size of a housecat.  Cougar is another name for mountain lion, puma, or catamount.  Those agile felines can weigh up to two hundred pounds.  Stay calm!  What is that creature crouching by the trail and waiting to pounce on me?

Hark!  I hear reindeer!  Or maybe pumas on the roof.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Christmas pansies

A little splurge, a little light, a little color, a little sharing--Christmas.  Swung into the garden store on the way to the Albertsons.  No one around except two elves.  All the poinsettias and frosted natural trees had been retrieved earlier. 

The long tables of pansies, primroses, ornamental cabbage, and cyclamen glowed against the gray sky outside the clear plastic roof.  Raindrops began to tap on that plastic, more and more, and then it's a downpour.  Such a silly moment.  Two young women in knit caps and parkas watering all these plants and drinking Starbucks.  Me with one each yellow, golden, and blue violet pansy pot in my arms, unable to resist a miniature pink cyclamen. 

We need color and light and laughter at the darkest time of the year.  How ancient is that need?  Does it predate the human harnessing of fire?  Is there a biological imperative for color and light?  Is it psychological?  I'm no scientist, but an artist fond of black, charcoal, gray, and white.  Still I need the spot of red that is the cardinal among the snow-covered branches.

For a moment I wonder if these young elves have the best job on earth.  My four little plants are in a brown paper sack.  The elf offers me a cardboard box to hold over my head.  She even offers to help me carry my purchase.  No need for us both to get soaked. 

We wish each other a Merry Christmas and I head to the parking lot under my box.  The wind is catching it, and I've forgotten to get the car keys out of my purse.  Not a scientist AND not a juggler!  Rain is running down my nose.  I hope the elves are laughing, too.  Six dollars very well spent.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Mr. Clean Snow Globe

"Now Endust! now, SoftScrub! now, Clorox and Ajax!

On, Comet! On, SpotShot!, on Swiffer and Windex!

To the top of the mirror! to the stain in the hall!

Now Lime-Away! Lime-Away! Lime-Away all!"

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Transmit Plan R

Watching our postal service deliver my Christmas presents with USPS Track and Confirm cheers me no end.  Imagine Santa and the eight tiny reindeer being tracked across the Big Board in the War Room. 

Plugged the old "Dr. Strangelove" VHS into the player.  Spread out the road atlas.  Piled up the tiny packages like colored cubes in the game of Risk.  Receiving status and location updates online.  Staying hydrated.  Taking good care of the precious bodily fluids.

My dad reports he was weighed today.  His reports aren't reliable, but he claims he weighs 165.9 pounds including his wheelchair.  Dad would not appreciate a comparison to Peter Sellers' performance.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Facing America's problem

You see them almost everywhere, passed out in the front yards of houses big and small, well-to-do and not-so.  Sometimes they're alone.  Other times in big gangs.  We don't talk about it.  We're just glad they aren't puking or panhandling.  They show up in late October when it starts to get chilly, and linger until almost Valentine's Day.

Fraternity brothers?

Football fans?

The homeless?

Derelicts, addicts, and needle-sharers?

No.

The uninflated.  Limp, ambitionless, uncared for Santas, snowmen, witches, Garfields, and other registered trademarks.







It's time to end the silence, America.  Blow 'em up, or move 'em out!  Rawhide!

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Celebrating without candycanes

The youngest music group, students ages three and four, stood up to sing their holiday songs.  The children sang (well a few sang, one rang a triangle, one pounded on a xylophone, and the rest just stared at the music teacher like deer in the headlice) a song about candycanes wrapped in cellobrain.  Or maybe they were in celebrains.

Their second song was about a Christmas train coming down the tracks loaded with sacks.  The pattern was, "Susie wants a dollie" or "Jimmy wants a drum".  Being able to come up with an idea, any idea, when your turn comes around is pretty challenging at this age.  Santa please disregard these requests for carrots, skates, and big cats.  Skates in Dallas?

Outside of the holiday music performance the children have been singing "Here We Go Round the Dining Room Table" to the mulberry bush tune.  They each get a turn to name something they will bring for a feast.  Amazing how the child who has resisted tasting any vegetable all semester suddenly contributes "sugar snap peas". 

When they handed out brains, I thought they said trains, and I missed mine. 

In kindergarten I always had to play the red rhythm sticks.  I wasn't deemed with it enough to ring the triangle, swish-swash the sandpaper blocks, clang the cymbals, or tap the tambourine.  Still not, but I know many good things to bring to the dining room table on a cold and frosty Christmas.  Ms. Nancy will bring green beans almondine, green beans almondine, green beans almondine.  Ms. Nancy still wants the sandpaper blocks...

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Red Hot Bad Napper Chili

My temper tantrum student brought a most appropriate gift of Firehouse Chili mix.  She has come a long way in our consistent environment since entering school, but she is still red hot more often than not. 

When she is bad she is horrid, just like the little girl with the curl.  She resists napping even though she is smart enough to know a good nap would make her feel better.


As a mom, I read the Mother Goose rhymes with certain personalizations.  Once you do that, you have to use the same personalizations every single time you read the rhyme.  Who knows how "smack dab" became part of the reading?  It must be pronounced like a hissing/chomping reptile with a backhand to the forehead:

There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Smack DAB in the middle of her forehead.


And when she was good
She was very good
And when she was bad she was horrid.

Just what does "smack dab" mean? 

In essence, the phrase means "slapped precisely in the center." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, smack-dab showed up in print in 1892: "He hit him smack dab in the mouth" [Dialect Notes I, 232].

The "at" symbol, @, always looks to me like the curl smack dab in the middle of a forehead.  The chili is looking mighty fine simmering on the stove.  Not a bit like a tantrum...

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

On my first trip to Target, my gift cards bought for me

Today is a festive day not marked on any Hallmark calendar. This is Spending Teacher Gift Cards Day, a ritual appreciated and hallelujahed by most teachers.

Don't get me wrong. I like every gift from students and their families. I especially like the kids' handmade cards and ornaments accompanied by hugs. The parents who stop long enough to ask how my dad is doing or if my sons will be here for the holidays are equally wonderful. One of the sweetest things a parent can do is acknowledge receipt of the gift made in class by the student. It doesn't happen very often.

Every teacher has just run a marathon whether they gave finals, read essays, and wrote progress reports, or just got little kids to line up straight for the holiday pageant. In the three to six year old classroom:

• Each child made a hand print in clay for a parent gift. The clay was fired, then painted, wrapped in bubble wrap, then tissue paper. At times teachers threw their bodies between the fragile hand prints and swinging lunchboxes or karate kicks.
• Each child made a card for parents.  And a lovely snowflake card it was.
• All the students collaborated on a gift for the lead teacher, the assistant, each staff member, each room mother and volunteer. That means they helped sew, wrote their names, made thumbprint pictures, signed their names again, and wrapped.
• The preschoolers made gifts for the elementary students and managed to deliver them to everyone.
• The preschoolers ate holiday cupcakes that were lovely frosting works of art.  Of course they all had green icing mustaches, and somebody had to clean up!
• The kids all performed in the music presentation.  More on that later.
• The lead teacher, the assistant, and the class pet rabbit collaborated on gifts for all the preschoolers.  More on that, too.
• Each child decorated a bag for carrying home all the holiday things.

And so, teachers like to receive store gift cards, and also wander like zombies in Target on their first day off. You might think it isn't in the true holiday spirit, but we are sooooo grateful! We want to collectively say, "Thank you so much for acknowledging that we've put off our personal Christmas efforts, seriously need some peace and quiet to read or have a thought, and could use a tiny bit of pampering."

Go ahead. Sing along.  On my first trip to Target, my gift cards bought for me:

A challenging Sudoku book
Fresh, new lunchbox
Greek yogurt
Boring black socks
Buick headlight bulb


Winter pajamas
Jicama and eggplant
Dried cranberries
New York Times crosswords
And a giant jug of Drano

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Jury Duty Cookies

Got a text last night from my youngest wondering if I used to make some kind of oatmeal ball cookie.  "If so," he asked, "what were they called?"

Yes, indeed, I used to make oatmeal ball cookies back when the Woolly Mammoth was just a very little Ghostbuster. We called those cookies "Jury Duty Cookies". 

A member of our Edmond, OK, babysitting co-op brought us a batch of cookies when her children came to our house for the day. She had been called for jury duty. I had been called for babysitting on short notice. My youngest had been called "Slimer" by his brothers.



I phoned "Slimer" back to give him the recipe last evening.  Jury Duty Cookies are really easy.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix 1 cup margarine, 1/2 cup flour No!  That would be 1/2 cup sugar!!, 1 cup flour, and 1 1/2 cups oatmeal together.  Form into 3 dozen balls.  Bake on cookie sheet 12-15 minutes.  Sprinkle with powdered sugar until they are slightly ghostly. 

If there's something strange




in your neighborhood



Who ya gonna call?



GHOSTBUSTERS


(or your babysitting co-op)

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Needlenose needs

Thank heaven we all had cell phones. How else could we call each other to enquire regarding the whereabouts of the needlenose pliers?

This Christmas the pliers were in high demand. First the headlights knob in the Buick broke, not for the first time. Visits to several auto shops failed to find the standard package of generic replacement knobs, so we were had to turn the lights on and off with the needlenose pliers. Three grownup drivers sharing one '96 Buick, plus one pair of pliers.

It was my turn to drive the Buick to Barnes and Noble when I got the call. "Mom, when can you be back here with the needlenose pliers? My key just broke off in the front door lock." I'm on my way to save the day.

My nephew is turning sixteen. Sure, he wants a car. It might be better if he got his own pair of needlenose pliers. Maybe I could have them engraved.

Sixteen is all about feeling invincible. Real life is all about breaking down that illusion, and dealing with the breakdowns.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

The Trouble with Truffles

So many chocolates in fancy containers, so little time. The candy seems to keep multiplying, first taking over the kitchen counter, then the coffee table. The truffles seem harmless at first. Shiny wrappers. Tempting aroma. Impressive names and pedigrees. Soon they are filling and flowing out of the ventilation system.

Captain Kirk's Starship Enterprise is eventually overrun with fuzzy, cheeping rodinks. CollageMama's condo is overrun with cute truffles.

No more presents! Just let me play in the gift box!



© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

I'm dreaming of a surfer Christmas

I'm glad the Obamas are spending a week or so in Hawaii. I hope the little girls are loving the island fashions. Maybe Michelle is checking out the Hawaiian quilting tradition.


When I was a child our very generous next door neighbor used to bring us Christmas gifts from Hawaii. We loved dressing up in shirts or muu-muus with bold floral patterns, leis and seed bracelets.

The guys behind the post office counter at 8:30 this morning looked like Maytag repairmen. This must be the slowest mail day of the year after a month of postal mania. When I told the man I couldn't stand any more Liberty Bells he was glad to show me some Hawaii statehood surfer stamps. I'm hearing that Hawaii Five-O theme song!

When the International Quilt Study Center opened in Lincoln, Nebraska, I saw my first Hawaiian quilt. It resembled a child's folded cut-out snowflake in red and white, but with island vegetation shapes. As a paper-cutter, I was intrigued. New England missionaries brought the idea of quilting to the Hawaiian natives in the early 1800s, along with new fabrics. There's something wonderful about the quilts that makes me feel a sweet aloha dream must be guaranteed for every user, Presidents included.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Possum chunks and chimney pucks

The sound first appeared when I lit the gas fireplace. I was dancing around the Christmas tree adding ornaments on a surprisingly cold evening. When the chunking sounds began I thought they were coming from the chimney. Exploding bricks? Falling chimney? Charred nest? Roasted rodent?

What year did I hire that chimney sweep? What century or millennium? Sure hope the Grinch isn't wedged in there. Chunk. . . . Chunk. . . . Chunk.

Got worried enough to put on a parka and walk out to stare at my chimney. No roasted marsupials or mammals. No flames or explosions. Just a new kid in the neighborhood practicing roller hockey. He's been hitting the puck into a big Rubbermaid tub every night with a regular rhythm. He seems like a nice kid, and self-motivated. Chunk.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

The Ghost of Acne Past

Scrooge that I am, I'm loathe to throw out the prescription bottles and lotions. The drawers and the medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom are giving me a dickens of a time. Can I toss the zit Rx with the warning label, "Do not consume after 2003"? What about the large tube of ointment that expired in 1999?

Bob Cratchit and I are cleaning up the condo. A revolving assortment of sons and their special females will be visiting here over the holidays. I worry about the special females. The condo upstairs was the domain of "the guys" for so many years. They don't live here now, but that bathroom still has teen guy cooties. Maybe I should add a cute little basket of shaped soaps!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Dancing With the Snowmen

They make me feel like dancing! Especially since the project is finished well ahead of schedule and under budget.

Texans don't plan their mental calendars allowing time for blizzards like Nebraskans. You just can't cut it too close in the high pressure world of preschool Christmas gift art projects up north. People who keep a shovel in the car trunk year-round know to factor in construction delays on major projects. Neither snow nor a little Dallas black ice will stay my little couriers from the swift completion of their holiday art projects.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

The Fire-Breathing Dragon Swishes Its Tail in Honalee

Kindly set your computer monitor over on its right side to view this post. You are entering Dragonsbreath Bay, and viewing the panels for the giant dragon mural installation at the Mile 16 aid station for the Dallas White Rock Marathon on Sunday, 12/14.

My art students, age 3-9, worked together on the paper mosaics. They helped tear construction paper scraps, and I brought torn papers from my color-sorted collage materials. The background material is brown butcher paper.

True, there is a large component of teacher artistic control on paper mosaic murals. The instructional goals:

1. Introducing the mosaic medium with historic examples
2. Considering permanent and short-lived materials
3. Experiencing for ourselves that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts
4. Observing magical shimmering effects of different papers
5. Working together without spilling too much glue on the newly-stripped and polished linoleum
6. *Recognizing the right side and wrong side of papers
7. **Imagining an edible mosaic
   
   
   
   
   
   (The installation gets a bit tricky in the neck/wings intersection.)
   
   
   
   
   
   
   (Each panel is 2'x3', or 3'x2'.)
   
   *My dad's golfing buddy once told a joke about a boss yelling out the window to his sod-laying blonde employees, "Green side up!" The children have pieces of paper for the mosaic, but they must determine which side is up for their colored section of the picture.
   
   **We considered fruit slices on a layer of cream cheese, and bell pepper squares on peanut butter. I was stunned when a kindergartener made the connection between mosaics and gingerbread houses!

Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea

And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee.

Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff

And brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff, oh


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder