We interrupt our program of dance music

No, this is not coming to you from the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel in New York City. It's just an itty bitty pulp week here in north Texas. First, I was introduced to the entertaining Pulp-O-Mizer cover maker website. Find your own inner mad scientist or grab your ray gun!*

Amazing Wonder Stories is a book we kids read at the breakfast table all about worms of THE FUTURE.  Nothing like a bowl of two shredded wheat biscuits with two heaping teaspoons of white sugar floating in the bluish skim milk to start the day right.  KFOR Radio droned the local news and farm report in the background as the "shattered wheat" slowly changed from inedible haystack to incredible Blob.

Home from school for lunch we sit on the tile floor of the basement at the house next door drinking Chocolate Quik, eating hot dogs or tuna fish sandwiches, and watching Twilight Zone reruns. Giant ants. Black and white tv.  Alien abductions. Worse, the dark laundry room and wood shop workbench behind the curtained doorway. You get scared, kid, you gotta go upstairs to the bathroom and risk meeting the irritable mother of the house.


Jump into the time machine, boys and girls, and travel with me to THE PRESENT DAY.  Enter the circular parking lot at a favorite park in your cream puff low-mileage used car. Only later will we realize how obvious    a landing site this is for armies of revenge-seeking giant Frosted Mini-Wheats from outer space.

Yes, the disciplined invaders began their march from the circle's center. It is important to note that this estimate is preliminary, and may be revised as more data is obtained.

We interrupt this cereal take-over report with a special bulletin:

  METEOR HITS EARTH  

 BUT ASTEROID MISSES   

NASA says the meteor hit is unrelated to the asteroid miss. Yes, the last two are real, but don't let your cereal get soggy. Don't say you weren't warned.

* Being of a certain age, Reagan always made me think of ray guns.

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder

Rama lama ding dong

Who put the loop in the doop di doopdi doop? Who put the slide cord lock on the bomp di bop? Who was that man? I'd like to shake his hand! He made it so much easier to attach the insulated cover over the outdoor faucet than the old kind with the hook on the inside and the wingnut on the outside. 

And no, I am not the wingnut crouching in the cold between the yaupon and the half-dead hedge to attach faucet covers. Got the new covers with the loop and slide cords last winter for my two faucets. Found one of the old hook and wingnut covers behind the holly bush to put on my elderly neighbor's faucet.  He's pretty shaky these days, and not up to the task.

We go together like insulated faucet covers. 

Remembered for winter.

Boogedy boogedy boogedy boogedy shooby doowop shebop

Chang chang changitty chang shoobop

Our faucets will always be warm wa wa wa wah

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Valentine socks rock around the clock

We rocked and bopped our little bazoozies off today helping all the kiddies put their Valentine cards in classmates' bags. Now I can open my bag, and the results are surprising. The lead is more splattered than the Republican presidential race. Disney Princesses do not control the girl constituency this year. No superhero in a flying cape offers hope of rescue. No movie tie-in dominates thanks to some superPAC money. A Ron Paul faction made their own Valentines.


Results:

Cars movie  /
Hot Wheels  /
Transformers  /
Trains  /
Samurai Power Rangers  /
Phineas & Ferb (a cartoon show I'd never seen)  /
Kitties  //
Doggies  ///
Whale /
Disney Mickey Mouse  //
Disney Princesses  /
Kung Fu Panda  /
Etch art dinosaur bones by Mello Smello with  poke-UR-eye-out stylus  /

Origami fortune teller  /
Fun foam insect with googly eyes  /
BFF  /
Hand-colored heart-shaped paper doily  /

Tempera paintings   //
Colored pencil drawings  //
Eames rocking chair  /  I'm not kidding!  I got a kiddie Valentine with my all-time favorite chair!

Chalkboard coffee mug  /  [Yes, a coffee mug I can write on with chalk.  It comes with warnings that chalk is not edible. This is also an excellent tongue-twister, as I kept saying "chalk bug coffee morgue", but then I also couldn't say "My spicy soup makes my nose drip"  three times fast at lunchtime.]

Shoulda worn my pink poodle skirt for the hop at school. I'm so glad my granddoggy is a schnauzer/yorkie mix. It would be embarrassing to have a porkie, dorkie, doodle, or schnoodle in the family.

And now let's pop Schnyidarmarink a Dink a Dink on the hi-fi turntable.




© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Bab-O eyes

Dad has taken a new step down his end-of-life staircase.  It is increasingly difficult for him to eat, drink, or clear secretions from his throat.  He holds his skeletal limbs in rigid poses to avoid the discomfort of movement.  His eyes look off into the far distant reaches of the galaxy.  His eyes... yes, it is the ... hmmm.  What is it exactly that is signalling the change?  Dad's eyes look just like my playmate's Tiny Tears doll's eyes after she scrubbed them with Bab-O.

Nurturing is so very out of style.  Kids of either gender do not rock or cuddle baby dolls.  Their parents are too young to remember a time of gritty cleaning products without tiny squirting dancing foam globules on t.v. ads.

"My mom is better than your mom" my playmate taunted.  "My mom uses Bab-O, NOT Comet!"

My playmate was jealous of the bright eyes on my Tiny Tears doll.  She had given her Tiny Tears a good scrubbing with Bab-O, and her dolly had weird gray unfocused eyes ever after unhappily.

Dad has those same weird gray unfocused Bab-O eyes.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Resting places

Cutting and sewing like a mad fiend, I let go of Dad's transition issues.  Dad will have to adjust to having a roommate, and I already feel a bit sorry for the roommate. We had to shoot Dad with a tiny tranquilizer dart Saturday. First time I ever saw Dad tear his hair out for real. The move had him very agitated and aggressive, hitting his aide. When he calmed down he was able to ask me a question with himself in the third person,"What does this mean for Howard?"  It means for Howard that he is still in Texas, still has the same caregivers, and will still be visited daily by that annoying woman who claims to be his daughter!

And so, I sew 2.5" strips around 9" squares. Spray with diluted starch and press seams open. Arrange squares on the living room carpet.  The project is a black/white grandbaby play mat. I have such wonderful memories of my tiny sons doing their first push-ups to better see the pattern of a blanket.  Getting things in focus and tracking movement are big incentives for an infant's development of neck strength and head movement. Yes, babies are looking for faces, but they are building more nuanced visual perception almost from birth. They are imprinting their parents' faces, but also the high contrast patterns around them.

My first square fabric blocks have plenty of pattern and contrast. From a composition standpoint, the layout needs more quiet, solid visual resting places, chances to stand still in the snow and listen to the wind in the pines before following the footprints.  And then my sister texts me reminding it is the seventh anniversary of our mom's death.

What does this mean for CollageMama? Well, she should probably clean and oil her sewing machine. Then she should spend some time in her quiet resting place...


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Spring Break guest

"Honey, I'm home!" 

Don't usually get to holler into the empty nest, but the preschool class rabbit is chilling with me this week.  Norton has his preferred corner of the living room with sunshiny windows on two sides of his cage.  He's been coming to this resort for school breaks for years now, but this is the first time since I moved the Eames furniture down from the house in Lincoln. 

I'm sure Norton will learn to appreciate this design aesthetic, but his initial impression regards the lack of shadowy places for curling up to snooze. Sometime during Spring Break I'll show him the TED Talks video about Charles and Ray Eames. Then we will build with my Eames House of Cards picture deck.

In rabbit years Norton is the same age as my father, and has many of the same problems. He has watery, mattering eyes. There are incontinence issues. Norton's appetite is better, I regret to report.

Norton is either ten years old and weighs nine pounds, or weighs ten pounds at nine years of age. And after one slow gallumph around the living room he is sound asleep next to the Eames rocking chair. Alas, that is similar to my exercise regimen.

Tonight I gave Norton a full report on the visit to Parkland Hospital to tell Felecia good-bye. I pray this fantastic drama teacher's stage exit will be any hour now. My dear friend is ravaged and reduced to an ineffective gasp of her fabulous self, and every minute is precious torture.

I told Norton how Felecia once sewed Robert Plant into his tight pants. And how she was always the first person to notice the monarch butterfly migration high in the Dallas sky. Glaring blue. Orange wings. How Felecia poured her compassion into tiny glasses of German wine to toast the New Year 2005 when Fritzi was dying.

Who else would savor a drive-through lunch at Burger King with the same connoisseur's relish as a Dallas Opera performance of "Tosca"? What a gift to have shared nine operas with Felecia, and also wandered away from the guided tour to find Nedda's pink trailer from "Pagliacci" in the DO's prop storage? 

Please let the former drive time DJ at KGUS in Hot Springs, Arkansas, have "twenty thousand watts of sparkling clear power" sending her off.  Soon.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Junco job fair

Most of today has been spent napping or staring at the birdfeeder. Just now, after twenty-four hours with penicillin, I feel more human than zombie.

There's a crossbar at the bottom of my birdfeeder hook that's the scene of major action. A pair of squirrels used the bar as a starting leap to climb up the hook to raid the birdfeeder. The pair took turns hanging upside down on the birdfeeder gorging themselves and knocking seed to the patio.

Enter the juncos. Although really sparrows, juncos wear handsome gray business suits, and have a pleasant song. My feeder has attracted quite a flock, so I've been calling it the "job fair". These busy birds could easily be dropping off resumes and networking in our current economic climate. While they occasionally eat at the feeder, they are more commonly scurrying around eating seeds spilled by the squirrel duo. They often hop over the crossbar, and visit the garden containers.

Mourning doves also prefer to eat off the ground. A pair has been wandering around the patio like mapless miniature golfers. When they wander up to the crossbar they bobble their necks and seem to say they don't have the wits to go under the limbo bar at this sock hop. They might mosey over to the hula hoops next.



© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Returned to Forever

True, it would have been fun to hear the reunion concert of Return to Forever at Grand Prairie's Nokia Theatre Sunday night. Instead, I heard the fabulous Fort Worth Opera's "Turandot" on Sunday. Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Al DiMeola, and Lenny White received a glowing review in the Dallas Morning News for their spontaneous fusion jams.



I had returned to those already uninspiring "Forever" postage stamps through the recent rate increase. Sure was nice to pick up some Frank Sinatra and Minnesota Statehood panes at the post office. The Woolly Mammoth is a big Sinatra fan, and he will have fun using the stamps when he writes his grandfather, soon I suggest!

I'll be even more excited about the Charles and Ray Eames stamps that go on sale June seventeenth.



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Maybe tomorrow at Tara

Scarlett O'Hara stuck on toilet for two years--Details at ten!

Rhett says he doesn't give a damn.

News that a Kansas woman sat on the john so long that the toilet seat became ingrown fueled much of the conversation in Nebraska this week. Obviously, the woman had flying monkey Oz plumbing issues.

What I want to know is whether the toilet was yellow, pink, or turquoise, since this was a bad case of Fifties trailer park design syndrome. Did the woman have fear of abrasive toilet paper, charminophobia? Also, did Dave Barry suggest there might be snakes in the commode? Was she afraid that popping the seal on the toilet might open an American Standard Pandora's box of real science and evolution? Was she waiting for Elvis to leave the building?



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

4-4 Time

True, it is the final day of Early Voting in Texas, and so glad I was able to take advantage of that option on my in-service day. It was pretty busy at the polling place.

Alas, I missed most of my chances to place daily votes in the March 2008 March Countdown at WRR Classical FM. I try to get out the door and into the Buick every work morning in time to hear the March of the Day at 7:35 on the radio. It's a fun, energizing start to the day.

The "Six Sousa Marches" was one of my favorite Little Golden Records as a child. Little Golden Records were orchestrated by Mitch Miller and featured the Sand Piper Singers. I can never quite catch the wisp of lyrics in my memory, but the Sand Pipers sang on several of the Sousa marches. This particular record, EP 489, was released in 1958, about the same time as the motion picture, "Bridge On the River Kwai".

My former mother-in-law once told me that she really wanted a doorbell that played the theme song from "Bridge On the River Kwai". Did she want POWs to march over and open the door? What was that march the POWs were whistling?

Buzz! Our contestant knows. It's the "Colonel Bogey March". But who was Colonel Bogey?

I'm particularly fond of Prokofiev's march from "The Love of Three Oranges". You can hear Prokofiev play the march on YouTube.

Just in case you are finding your piece of Trivial Pursuit quiche just out of reach at the moment, General Custer's favorite marching music was the Irish drinking song "Garryowen".

What was the Monty Python theme march? Sousa's "Liberty Bell".

These were the results of the 2007 voting for favorite marches:

1. Stars and Stripes Forever (Sousa)


2. Imperial March (Williams)


3. Colonel Bogey March (Alford)


4. Aida Grand March (Verdi)


5. Washington Post (Sousa)


6. Liberty Bell (Sousa)


7. Seventy Six Trombones (Willson)


8. Marche Slave (Tchaikovsky)


9. Radetzky (J Strauss I)


10. Pomp and Circumstance March #1 (Elgar) *


11. Semper Fidelis (Sousa)


12. Grandioso (Seitz)


13. Raiders March from Raiders of the Lost Ark (Williams)


14. Procession of the Nobles (Rimsky-Korsakov)


15. Under the Double Eagle (JF Wagner)


16. Symphonic Metamorphosis March (Hindemith)


17. March of the Toreadors (Bizet)


18. Entry of the Gladiators (Fucik)


19. National Emblem (Bagley)


20. Barnum and Bailey's Favorite (King)
    

"Colonel Bogey" may have been the nickname of an eccentric British colonel and golfer in WWI. Some say the colonel whistled instead of shouting, "Fore!" at Inverness.

This colonel in plus-fours is not to be confused with General William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. Charles Ives' "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven" celebrates a struggle between two marching bands approaching and passing each other. Ives never forgot his boyhood experience of hearing multiple brass bands march by, their different tunes advancing, mixing and receding. I will never forget my experience hearing Andrew Litton conduct the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for a live recording of Ives' cacophonous piece while watching from nearly overhead.



"Battle of the Bands" and "March Madness" are common phrases. March came in like a lion, and tuned the radio to 101.1 FM. Enjoy your memory's Battle of the Marches.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Cross-Dressing Ostrich Does Charleston

If you look awhile at the little students' art you begin to see a storyline for the ostriches. The birds start off cautiously, and one surreptitiously hikes up his sagging pantyhose.


They settle into the march, ready to go a long distance over the parched grassland of Africa.


Some are afraid of their shadows. Others are more bold and confident.


Getting up to full stride, one runs like crazy. Others do chest bumps, endzone victory displays, and the knee-swapping move of the Charleston.

Male ostriches have black and white feathers. Females have brown and gray. All of them have fabulous long eyelashes.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Herbie Hancock & Bill Bryson

Don't know when my master bathroom became the recharging room. There are only two electrical outlets. I've got my toothbrush, phone, and camera battery all recharging, and then my little nightlight in one plug. I know I'm unlikely to forget my phone if I plug it in here, but will probably forget it plugged anywhere else.

Funny image, remembering the old Miller and Paine Ladies' Lounge on second floor of the downtown department store. Besides the clean restroom with dozens of toilets, the lounge also had a room for lady shoppers to put their feet up, rest and refuel, meet friends before a lunch in the Tea Room, take care of infants, or even read the newspaper.

Nowadays we do all our recharging electronically. What would the Miller and Paine Ladies' Lounge look like with laptops recharging, women multi-tasking by cellphone, instant-messaging, listening to iPods, and showing the kiddies a movie on a tiny portable dvd player to keep them from fussing?! That would only happen if we slowed down enough to sit even briefly in the lounge.

We forget that we need to put our mental feet up, rest, meet friends before lunch, and refuel. I'm grateful to have a three-day weekend. Even more, I'm glad to have a gray, rainy weekend reminding me to keep things simple and recharge. Lunch and walk with a friend, writing, making art, listening to Herbie Hancock's River: the joni letters... Wayne Shorter's sax flows through me like mercury beads from a broken thermometer scooting across the bathroom floor.

Laughing. What wonderful biofuel for the psyche! Bill Bryson's memoir of childhood in 1950s Des Moines, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, has me laughing so hard the tears run down my cheeks.

The Turbo Tax return will wait another day or another week. How much better I feel for untasking and relaxing!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Band-Aid Aisle

Wok with me to the Walgreens bandage aisle. It's a complicated place with far more choices than necessary. There are so many options that your wound will very likely be invaded by a staph infection before you can find the right sort of Band-Aid.

I had too many things on my mind the evening I poured the frozen broccoli into the wok's heated oil. We all know that is a no-no, and I'm sure my seventh grade home ec teacher, Mrs. Starr, is shaking her finger at me right now. Well, duh, the ice and oil exploded, giving me an ugly burn on my pinkie finger and wrist. Now that it has healed, I can share both my stupid moment and my amazement about bandage varieties.

For over a decade my minivan glove compartment contained a box of 1990 lime green Ninja Turtle bandages. One Ninja Turtle bandage remained in the zippered inside pouch of my purse until I had a son in grad school. After 1990, my sons had matured, if that's the word, with far fewer small Band-Aid-able kiss-to-make-it-better scrapes. They advanced to occasional major injuries requiring casts, crutches, x-rays, and collarbone contraptions

In my own preschool years I wore many Band-Aids on my knees. My favorites were shiny bandages in solid green, yellow, blue, and red. My parents called them "battle ribbons". Been Googling in search of those circa 1957 vintage bandages without success. Think they must predate both the Band-Aid "Stars and Strips", and the Curad "Battle Ribbon" tins. I've appreciated the unofficial online Band-Aid history museum and the Johnson & Johnson and Band-Aid websites.

Large antibiotic Band-Aids don't stick very well. I needed them because my wrist was irritated by sleeves and mousepads. Eventually, my wrist was irritated by the adhesive of those Band-Aids, too.

Tapered finger Band-Aids are a useful invention. The shape allows for wrapping around bends and knuckles. They are a useful addition to the home medicine cabinet.

I was really torn trying to project a boring, grown-up facade after my painful mistake. What I really wanted to sport were the Walgreens brand Crayon adhesive strips that reminded me of those old "battle ribbons" of my childhood. No Ninja Turtles from the glove compartment for me.


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Naughty or Nice? Clamps, but no Vise!

Santa's workshop must be a place of furious industry and creativity this time of year. I love the idea of making gifts while keeping the endeavor a surprise. While I never caught sight of any elves in the basement, I loved "working" with my dad on his "projects" as a preschooler.

The folks who make scents, candles, and potpourri for the Christmas season are missing the smells for Santa's basement workshop:

Sawdust

Turpentine

Old, dried-out newspaper

Dust

Dryer lint

Sandpaper

Dial Soap bars

Varnish and shellac

Epoxy

Aging corrugated cardboard

"Gunk" orange hand-cleaner

Several of my little students are ready to learn blended consonant sounds. "Clamp" is a strange vocabulary word for them, so I took every clamp I could find in junk drawers, tool boxes, and art supplies to school. We added day-glo bright squeeze mini-clamps, some plywood and masonite scraps, and a plastic construction worker hat to create a very popular classroom work center. Maybe I'm not the only kid who thinks C-clamps are C-cool! The kids are knocking each other out of the way like Tonya Harding's goons for the chance to twirl the gizmo on the C-clamp!

Not brave enough to do preschool sawing at a mitre box next, but Dad's workshop vise and mitre box empowered my outlook on life. Dad let me pound nails into a bar of Dial soap "to build a better mousetrap" on our evenings in the basement. My mom must have been washing dishes and caring for my younger siblings while Dad and I spent quality time sorting nuts and bolts. Perhaps my favorite mystery was the long row of Gerber baby food jars hanging by their lids from a shelf on the workshop pegboard.

"If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbour," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, "tho' he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door." And where is Waldo now?

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

"Good Night and Good Luck"

Fit George Clooney's new movie in between the usual Friday errands. Had a lot of extra time, as no Buick repairs were required the week!

The movie about Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy is a visual delight in black and white. Every frame is a composition for the art teacher to consider. Every fraction of eye movement or puff of smoke is packed with meaning. My only wish is that the movie had spent five more minutes clarifying the roles of the various newsroom characters. The Wershbas are a mystery to me.

• My photographer son and his film buddies need to see the movie because of the impact of black and white.
• My vintage clothes shop son will like the Fifties style.
• My speech and debate son will appreciate the rhetoric and enunciation.
• My eclectic music son will love the Dianne Reeves jazz numbers.
• My Fahrenheit 9/11 son will love the modern media cautionary tale.
• My history major son will know all the background.

Remember those logic puzzles? Mr. Green lives in the tallest house. Mr. Gray's pet is black and white. The rhino eats Rice Krispies for breakfast. So who eats toast and jelly for breakfast on the roof of the blue house? I used to love those problems! They make so much more sense than real life. Plus, I only have three sons.

She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother...

I can't make a cherry pie, and I am much too young to actually remember the McCarthy Era, but I remember "McCarthyism" being as detested as "Tricky Dick" by adults around me. I loved to listen to Murrow and Fred Friendly's three albums of "I Can Hear It Now" on the hi-fi. Murrow's voice was so impressive, and I loved hearing Churchill, Roosevelt, and "Oh, the humanity!," of the Hindenburg disaster.

For all my precociousness, I couldn't quite sort out McCarthy until sometime around 1968. I wasn't as off-base as in my Dead Sea Squirrels confusion, but I did wonder how that puppet could be both funny and evil.

HUAC vs. HVAC. Are Commie Pinkos hiding in your duct work?

Gordie Doll

When I was very little, I got a boy baby doll for a present, and I named it Gordie Doll. I'm not sure why I even thought it was a boy doll, since dolls in the mid-Fifties certainly didn't have any telltale features. Gordie Doll didn't have hair like my Tiny Tears. His molded rubber head had a few textured swirls to hint at hair, but they were not colored. Okay, basically Gordie Doll was a bald baby. Being two, I decided he looked like my parents' architect friend, Gordie. I am not sure that the architect was flattered to have a namesake. Most of the time Gordie Doll just wore a white terry cloth bathrobe that my mom had made. The robe had "Dolly" stitched in red cursive letters on the back like a boxer's robe. Gordie Doll was not as high tech and interactive as Tiny Tears. It was not possible to give Gordie Doll a bottle of water.

Thinking of Gordie Doll brings up smell and texture memories even more than visual images. I have no memory of the actual architect, but I can smell the doll and the warm wood smell of the picnic table where it was probably left out in the sun all afternoon. Wonder what area of my brain synapses would light up in scientific tests!

An old buddy has been growing birdhouse gourds out at her farm. She's also been in chemotherapy this year. Janie knows I am into gourds, and the various ways they are used and decorated around the world. I'm wondering if my interest in gourds was triggered by my ancient fondness for Gordie Doll. Janie has gourds for my students to decorate for maracas or birdhouses. I'm excited anticipating a jaunt to her farm to collect the gourds Friday. Do we still make the same powerful sensory memories at age forty-nine as at age two? I bet the gourds will be as bald as Gordie Doll.

Pink Giraffe

"Make mine a Shirley Temple, bartender."

I bet kids don't drink Shirley Temples in fancy restaurants and country clubs anymore. I've only had one student who knew about Shirley Temple and the Good Ship Lollipop. I'm sure none of my students have experienced the pure sugar rush of a candy cigarette. My Barbie had over-the-elbow gloves. Maurice Chevalier knew about the night they invented Shirley Temples. Thank heaven we little girls could pretend we were wearing over-the-elbow gloves as we munched our candy cigarettes, sipped our Shirley Temples, and said, "Dahling!" Try to imagine Carol Channing with black olives on all her fingers singing, "Olives are a girl's best friend." I never could decide if I looked more like Leslie Caron or Audrey Hepburn!

Did a very patchy job applying sunscreen before the one p.m. soccer game. I look ridiculous. My neck is lobster red striped with white due to my double chins-in-waiting. My arms look like pink giraffes. One foot is red, but the other is white. My legs are covered with bug bites. Reminds me of the old picture book, "You Look Ridiculous, Said the Rhinoceros to the Hippopotamus".

Should you be curious about making a Shirley Temple or a Roy Rogers for your little socialite, try this site: http://www.drinksmixer.com/drink8476.html

Toilet trouble

A few days back I wrote about our first house in Omaha, Nebraska. I'll now attempt to answer questions raised by Gentle Readers regarding the bathroom with its yellow fixtures.

The house was a little tract house, built in the late-Fifties. The brown wall tiles were original to the house. The brown tiles went half-way up the walls behind the yellow bathtub and sink. The crinkle mirror tiles above them were probably added by the same aesthetically-challenged previous owner who painted the green stripes on the exterior of the house. The brown went with the pastel fixtures better than some of the other colors the builder used, like swamp green tiles with pink fixtures...

Sometimes you have to work with no budget. By the time I got the bamboo window shade, and put a 3 foot square oil painting of fossil turtle shells on one wall, it got to be a cute bathroom. Then one night the yellow toilet tank spontaneously cracked apart. The only credit card we had was Sears, so we rushed to Sears and bought a yellow toilet. Sears would bring it the next day and install it, but they had no yellow toilet seats in stock. They would order one, and let us have a "loaner", which is a pretty bizarre concept.

We waited for months for the yellow toilet seat. I would call Sears every few weeks to check on the status, and they would say it was back-ordered. Finally one store clerk realized that something was wrong with the order. The clerk who originally wrote up the order for us entered the store number, 256, in the space for quantity ordered instead of one. Can you imagine if a truck had pulled up and delivered 256 yellow toilet seats?

Jump to last evening. My toilet was running and running. I asked Mike what he did to it. He said he took the lid off, and messed around with the handle and float and flapper.

This morning the toilet was running laps again, plus, it wouldn't flush. I headed off to Home Depot to buy a new flush valve flapper and flush handle. I installed those, did the plunger dance, burned incense, prayed for forgiveness for offending the 256 yellow toilet seats. Mike finally woke up and mumbled something about "the black thing in the hole being upside down maybe". I had no clue what he was talking about. He staggered downstairs, and took a black cup from the pipe below the flush valve flapper. He inverted it, and went back to bed.

At this point the situation deteriorates further, and the little black cup thingie won't come back out of the pipe. I start reading instructions for removing the tank from the toilet. My vocabulary heats up. I try one last removal attempt with a screwdriver, and the black cup thingie pops out. Lo, and behold, it is the little hat that belongs on top of the fill valve column. The toilet is happy. I am happy. Ten dollars and two and a half hours of how not to fix a toilet. At least nothing was back-ordered.

That is my salute to Mr. Clapper, inventor of the flush toilet. Now we are leaving to hear Mr. Clapton at the Cotton Bowl.