Raccoons

Since the very exciting day of December sixth when the raccoons visited we have been making raccoon art.  The raccoons were not invited guests.  It was a surprise party.

"Boys and girls," I announced, "there is a BIG raccoon outside the window."  Indeed, there was a large, curious, unafraid male raccoon strolling by and staring in the windows. Where was my camera?  AWOL. A maintenance man and a mom with a big purse were trying to shoo Mr. Raccoon back toward the creek.

Not white as snow, but it did make the children laugh and play to see a raccoon at school. Later that day we saw Mrs. Raccoon wandering around near the creek across the parking lot from the playground. Pruning crews have recently removed lots of brush along the creek, and may have disturbed the raccoon's habitat.

Some animals capture our imagination at an early age. We are curious about them the rest of our lives. We care and even worry about them. I care about raccoons because of the Little Golden Book of Baby Animals, illustrated by Garth Williams. My copy is pretty crumbly these days, and I hope it survives a trip through the scanner!

It's silly really. The animals that tug on me are not pets. I'm sure not a shaman, although that's an intriguing visual possibility! Way back before I even had a baby brother, my dad had eyeglass frames that looked just like Baby Racoon to my young eyes. That's my life-long connection! Build those ties early and visually...

Question: Is there 2 ways to spell raccoon?  

Opinion: Yes, if you have a brother Darryl and another brother Darryl.

Answer: The word raccoon can be spelt with, or without a double C, and therefore can alternatively be spelt "racoon". 

Detour: And spelt is also known as dinkel wheat, but not by Darryl.

And wouldn't Dinkel Wheat be a good name for a band?

I want my young students to connect all the body
parts in their drawings.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Mud thoughts

No, not musing on ugly campaign tactics, walking under the freeway.  Wednesday was so beautiful I made another trek  under Over World.  And there was joy in Mudville when mighty CollageMama looked up.

With color on hiatus, texture is much more visible.  The many installations of mud tubes on the concrete support columns and beams under the freeway ramps impressed me with their structural precision and beauty.  Thanks to a former teacher/365photographer in Tennessee, I've learned they are made by organ pipe mud dauber wasps.  [No, that was not Mork's wife.]  Male mud dauber wasps guard the nest while the females go hunting for orb spiders to stuff into the pipes to feed the little ones.  Okay, I'm not going to make the manicotti for supper tonight...

There are many mud bird nests under the freeway access ramps, but not any under the main lanes of US 75.  Too much noise and vibration?  Or maybe to far a first flight to open sky?  There is a shortage of graffiti, too.  Will the birds and spray paint artists return to nest in the spring?  What can I learn about teaching clay projects for children from the birds, the wasps, and the tire tracks?

Heading back toward the trailhead, a word that sounds ridiculous in this urban setting, I annoyed a great blue heron in the creek on beyond the graffiti column.  The heron flew away against the traffic.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Miss Nebraska dreams of Jeannie

Staying power is what it's all about.  Keep cashing those royalty checks.

Last night a seventeen year old from Nebraska was crowned Miss America.  Last time I watched a beauty contest Bert Parks was still singing.  Will we remember the name of the 2011 winner in forty or fifty years?  Not likely unless they rename "O" Street in her honor!

Every single noon the woman across the hall from Dad watches a TVLand "I Dream of Jeannie" marathon four episodes with Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman.  Every supper hour the resident in the room next to Dad's watches "All In the Family" with Jean Stapleton's shrill rendition of "Those Were the Days".  

Most evenings I get home, unload my lunchbox containers into the dishwasher, and hit the start button for the cd player.  Verdi's Nabucco wipes out the audio of Jean and Jeannie. 

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

The parsnip stands alone

What would Beatrix Potter do this weekend to mollify the preschool class rabbit? Offer parsley and parsnips? Lettuces and salsify?

Norton only wants to chew on items in my condo that are expressly forbidden. Most of the time he is quite happy sleeping in his cage with his head upon a parsnip. I felt bad about my tough love approach the first night of his visit, so I got a small bag of parsnips at Albertsons. This was a first, as I'm generally afraid of white root vegetables. It's a long story involving creamed turnips and future in-laws, but I'm out of therapy now, and we just won't mention it.

I cut up two parsnips for the ham-bone crockpot soup, and gave one to Norton. Then I went back to hoeing just like Mr. MacGregor. Norton snorted at the parsnip, and went back to flinging hay around his cage. Clearly, he was not placated. I offered him three delicious and nutritious cooked edamame, and he dumped them to the cage bottom newspaper. He'd already made his opinion of fresh green beans known. Nothing was going to do but a carrot, an apple core, and a celery heart, pronto!

Two days later, the parsnip is still vegetabla non grata. My soup was delicious, but Norton still snorts at his veggie. He would rather hide in a watering can than nibble on that parsnip. I haven't asked about his former in-laws since I don't want to search the Yellow Pages for a rabbit psychologist.

My young sons and I loved listening to cassette tapes of Bunnicula stories on long car rides. James and Deborah Howe's stories of the vampire rabbit presumed to suck the juice out of vegetables would have us laughing so hard our seatbelts hurt. The Celery Stalks At Midnight is one of my all-time favorite book titles.

Just as an aside, I was sad to read the obituary for Suzanne Pleshette this weekend. It seems completely plausible that her Emily Hartley would give Bob Newhart her support and sardonic advice for dealing with Norton's parsniphobia. Suzanne Pleshette ranks second to Barbara Feldon for favorite voices.

Falling Into the Purses of Terrorists

Parents, it's 10:00 p.m. Do you know where your children are?
This often-parodied television PSA (Public Service Announcement) aired in the Seventies.

Parents, it's 3:00 p.m. Do you know where your children are?
This PSA was shown more recently to raise awareness about latchkey kids unsupervised after school.

Parents, it's junior year abroad. Do you know where your passports are?
The brochures for parents of college students studying abroad stress having a passport ready just in case of the unthinkable. I wave my passport in front of my son heading off to Italy. Trying to sound like Clint Eastwood's rattlesnake-handling, tobacco-spitting grandma, I snarl, "I've got a passport. Don't make me use it!"

My sum total experience of foreign travel consists of three hours in Matamoros, Mexico, wanting to get my young sons back across the border ASAP. The grown globe-roaming-gnome sons know that I'm ill-equipped for international rescues, so they had better mind their international Ps & Qs.

Still, I was fretting about the Woolly Mammoth heading off on his Big Adventure last time I flew to Nebraska to help my dad. Should I take my passport just in case? I juggled pros and cons while I packed my little red rolling suitcase and my purse.

Home from the trip I realized that my RescueMama passport did not return with me. Where could it be? Under the bed in Nebraska? In Dad's car? In the long-term parking shuttle bus? On the floor at DFW or the Eppley airport terminal? In a landfill somewhere? OR...dun-dun-dun...........in the hands of a terrorist identity thief!

"Don't panic," I told myself.

"You did something logical with the passport," I chanted silently.

"You did NOT shred and recycle the passport accidentally, and besides, what kind of terrorist would sort the cans from the paper and #2 plastic?"

"IT IS WAY TOO SOON TO PANIC," I scolded myself daily.

"Don't call Homeland Security yet! That passport cost seventy-five dollars, and IT WILL TURN UP!"

"If you worry about the passport, the terrorists will have won!," I channeled Dubya.

It's been a long month of internal monologues and fretting. Yeehaw! I woke up this morning and remembered where I put my passport. Now I can stop fretting about it having fallen into the hands of terrorists! It was inside that big, ugly tropical purse that I considered taking last time I flew to Lincoln before deciding it was just too darn big, jungly, and ugly even for me. The fashion police would wand me before I even got to the TSA queue. They would not be lenient even though the purse has plenty of room for the New York Times crossword puzzle and a large extended family of cockatoos.







© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Neapolitan Sky

This evening's storm was short, but a doozy. The electricity went off twice, so the LEDs are blinking their irritation. Walked outside afterward. The sky to the north above the Walgreens store's red neon glowed as a dessert delight. A little bit neapolitan ice cream, a big blast of patriotic bomb pop, and a just-washed fresh fruit parfait, completely harmonious, but each competing for the spotlight. If I were the slightest bit meteorological, I'd say that the ions were tingling.

Just above the Walgreen's the sky was a cut glass trifle bowl of homestyle vanilla ice cream scoops just the teensiest bit melty. The next layer was a thin band sometimes watermelon pink, but changing to raspberry sorbet the next glance in my rearview mirror. On top was the widest band of tingling velvet blue frosted with lavendar like a close-up photo of a blueberry, or a lush, gorgeous, itchy mohair sweater designed by Mark Rothko.

Here in Dallas, we are really tired of television weather personalities talking about "upper level lows". To separate the problems, I'm tired of the weather allegedly produced by "upper level lows", and I'm sick of weather personalities on television news programs. The weather segment of the news keeps expanding to fill in for the absence of actual news reporting. Now we have to hear about "dry lines" and be broadcast live from somebody's backyard picnic.

Top Ten List of what I want from my local weather report:

10. An honest family guy writing with chalk on a blackboard map who can pronounce city and county names correctly. Bowtie optional
9. One brief report of somewhere in the world having a hideous weather calamity so I can say, "Thank heavens I don't live in _________."
8. That the phrase, "ask your doctor if _______ is right for you," doesn't arrive in any of the sponsoring commercials.
7. A Doppler radar map in purdy colors.
6. An air quality/allergy/ozone report summarized as "Don't inhale."
5. Rainfall total for the month
4. Expected overnight low temp
3. The current temperature
2. Do I need to take cover for the approaching tornado right now?
1. Will it be a school snow day in the morning?

I became a cloud watcher in the summer of 1973 at Ten Mile Lake near Hackensack, Minnesota. After my first airplane flight I spent a couple extremely rainy weeks at a friend's cabin on the lake. The days of rains chained together, braided with the Senate Watergate hearings and Johnny Miller's win at the U.S. Open on the black and white tv screen.

Never mastered the names for the clouds, or any of the science. It's only as a painter that I'm interested. The painter, and the kid sitting in the grass eating a ten cent bomb pop.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Sell No Clem Before Its Rind

Back in the Seventies, Orson Welles did some television commercials for Paul Masson jug wine, in which he uttered the tag line, "Paul Masson will sell no wine... before its time."

Drying clementines for use in ornamental wreaths takes more time than anticipated. I'd been air-drying the fruit for a week or so when I got frustrated. That's it! These Lil Cuties are going in the oven at 170 degrees for about twelve hours. I'm going to stick some whole cloves into their little vampire hearts, too.

Okay, they are a little bit cute. Back in Camp Fire Girls, we would have spray-painted them gold and added many folded Readers' Digests.






© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Step aside, Fodor and Frommer...

It's time for a new travel guide--The Baby Boomer's Guide to Hospital Food. I'm offering to do the taste-testing and write the reviews. All I need is an RV with wireless internet. Remember that intern named Gonzo Gates, played by Gregory Harrison, on "Trapper John, M.D." who lived in an RV in the hospital parking lot? I'll do the driving myself. Sometimes I'd even be willing to go "undercover" as a secret patient or secret visitor, although it would be more harrowing and drafty than being a secret shopper.



You ask, of course, what credentials I have for the job. I've spent five years as an insider, working in a hospital kitchen making sure patients get the most nutritious and appetizing meals their doctors will allow. I've eaten in hospital cafeterias as a penny-pinching hospital employee*, and as a sleep-deprived and worried visitor hoping for a decent meal without added stress. As a patient I've learned that when the going gets rough, the tough order prune juice, and that the nurse assistant is comparing your intake versus your ouput. As a parent I've learned tricks to get sick kids to eat. As a daughter I've learned a few ways to get elderly patients to consume more liquids. I understand the frustration of opening a pack of saltines, or peeling the foil top off a container of juice without spilling. I know the magic words to say if you want a toasted peanut butter sandwich and raspberry sherbet at 2:30 a.m., as well as the winning strategy for marking menus. I understand that kitchen employees work hard and really want to get patients' meals right, but computers don't necessarily aid their efforts.


The most important thing I've learned is that the experience of a meal in a hospital MUST NOT BE AN ADDED AGGRAVATION for patients, families, or staff. Did I mention I look really cute in a hairnet?

*We won't discuss minimum wage legislation at this time.

Rhoda Goes To Love Field

Yee-haw! I am getting out of town! I just had to stop by work to fax Jeff's birth certificate to him in Indiana before going to the airport. I am so grateful for Mike taking me to the airport and taking care of the condo while I'm gone. I am just letting go of all the worrying and care-taking of my normal existence. An egg McMuffin and I'm out of here!

There is a learning curve to my new wheely suitcase. I loaded it wrong, so it keeps flopping over on its belly. I get tangled up between my purse and the wheely handle, but fortunately I don't break my arm. It weighs entirely too much for me to boost it up into an overhead carry-on bin. I'm thrilled to check it and break free. Somehow, I don't think Mary Tyler Moore would be tangled in her suitcase when she strides off into her new life and throws her hat in the air. Still, I might just make it after all.

The Prune Song

The Prune Song translation I typed up before made me think of an Andy Kaufman routine. This is a more lyrical version, for which I thank www.kovandasczechband.org, the translator, and the publisher:



English interpretation by Robert Ermis. This is a literal translation of Prune Song rather than a translation designed to be sung.

Verse 1:
Beyond our village on the state highway
plums are growing.
With Annie I searched. We used to eat plums.
It was always so nice.
We always sat near each other.
We gazed at the stars and heavens.
And now, so alone already, I recall everything
I would like to be near you.

Refrain:
In our lane, plums are rolling.
I don't watch them today.
My eyes are burning.
If I had a girl, I would go after her.
I would give her a kiss on the cheek.
Nobody would know.

Verse 2:
Beyond our village on the state highway
plums are like fists.
Annie said nothing. She ran away from me.
Now I have no good luck.
Annie now watches the plums with somebody else.
She no longer watches our plum jam.
The stars used to see things.
One doesn't talk about that.

This presentation Copyright © 1998, 2004 George W. Jolly. Permission is granted for use of this information provided that you observe all rights of the original author, publisher or other legal copyright holder of this song. Without those writers and publishers we would have no access to beautiful music.