Still out there blogging

Please visit my new endeavors, Honeysuckle Sphinx Moth Design, To Know a Place: Oak Point Nature Preserve, and CollageMama's Hearty Breakfast Blog. Thanks for stopping by!

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder

Detouring.

Pardon our dust.  This Itty Bitty Blog is heading to sunny side up climes.  Every decade or so it's time to hit the trail.  Thank you for your faithful or misguided  arrival at this blog.  I would be delighted if you stopped in at my new blog, CollageMama's Hearty Breakfast Blog.  The first post is  here 

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder aka CollageMama

Mice skate close to the edge, write 8s

Thanks so much to Kim of Hummus Anonymous for getting me inspired for this week's art class.  Seeing the finger figure skates made by her daughter got me looping about the mental ice. But like most inspirations, I was caught in the crossfire of memories, images, words, and events.

Snow on the playground made Tuesday magical. Getting the smallest students bundled for a real life snow experience involved lots of turning sleeves right-side-out, and aiming thumbs into their own mitten studio apartment.

The five year olds are practicing writing the number eight.  This number is both the beautiful, graceful, double om of loops on ice, and purest torture for most young writers.  S S S, then / / /.  Link the bottom to the top.  No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, don't take that detour!  Don't double back around!

My ankles are too wobbly for skating, and my shoulder too shaky for holding the picture book back-handed.  Ed and Rebecca Emberley's picture book, Mice On Ice, added more ideas to the mix.  Next week the kids will make a 3-D ice rink.  The white crayon wax resist with the blue watercolor/black ink wash looked nicely icy.

"You are skating on thin ice" implies risky behavior without the disrespectful attitude associated with "pushing your luck". While I was pleased to find Kristi Yamaguchi's Olympic "Blue Danube" program online, I can't find Mary Tyler Moore's classic figure skating spin from the early 70s.

I'm midway between the eighth anniversary of my mother's death and the first anniversary of my dad's. As Dad worked through paralyzing grief at Mom's death, he found a little window of light.  "I'll never have to watch figure skating again!"









© 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

askFat 17

I am unable to convince Blogger Comments that I am not a robot.  Therefore, I have decided to become a robot.  Blogger suggested a splendid robot name:

Should a PIN be necessary to activate, enter Hi2sB0yElr0y.

Danger Bifocal Robinson admin sys bop flop squint.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Little Ms. Muffet finds gregarious, tufted caterpillars

So, just what is a tussock?  My grandma had a hassock. She put her feet up to relieve her bursitis. I'm relieved to find an ID for the fabulous caterpillars I spotted on my walk after work.

Thanks to the Discover Life page at the University of Georgia, I was able to eliminate several possible suspects. I also found an interesting blog, Living With Insects to follow.

Euchaetes egle (Drury, 1773)
MILKWEED TUSSOCK MOTH
Milkweed Tiger Moth; Milkweed Caterpillar

So, tell me again, what is a tussock?
tus·sock  (tsk) n.

1. A clump or tuft, as of growing grass.

2. A tuft of hair or feathers.

Ms. Muffet had a tuffet. Is that like a tussock, or like a hassack?  Is it a grassy hillock or knoll?

Grandma never called the hassock an ottoman.  I'm sure Miss Muffet never sat on Grandma's hassock. Time for a check with Wikipedia:

A tuffet, pouffe or hassock is a piece of furniture used as a footstool or low seat.^[1] It is distinguished from a stool by being completely covered in cloth so that no legs are visible. It is essentially a large hard cushion that may have an internal wooden frame to give it more rigidity. Wooden feet may be added to the base to give it stability, at which point it becomes a stool or a footstool. If the piece is larger, with storage space inside it, then it is generally known as an ottoman.^[2]dral Hassock has special association with churches, as it is used to describe the thick cushions employed by the congregation to kneel on while in prayer. ^[3]

has·sock

 noun \ˈha-sək\

Definition of HASSOCK

1

: tussock

2

a : a cushion for kneeling hassock

b : a padded cushion or low stool that serves as a seat or leg rest

I attended pay-what-you-can-night of "Second City Does Dallas" at the Wyly Theatre Center.  Improv doesn't do much for me, what with the anxiety of knowing audience members could be escorted up on stage at any moment to be embarrassed.  I would rather a spider sat down beside her!  The stranger sitting next to me was picked for a stage moment, poor dear, and had to sing some song about balls.  Second City did a long skit about the JFK assassination, something that will never be humorous in Dallas, and should not be elsewhere.  I'm not the only one with inflamed bursa* over that, as the Dallas Morning News critic Lawson Taitte made the same criticism when the show opened.

Not to be funny, but I have been wondering who invented the term "grassy knoll", a phrase that surely says Dallas.  Urban Dictionary calls the phrase, among other things, "a metaphor and a source of irony when referring to a suspicion, conspiracy, or a cover-up of some type."

Alas, I must go to work without solving the age-old question of why tuffet doesn't rhyme with buffet.

*Bursitis is the inflammation of one or more bursae (small sacs) of synovial fluid in the body. The bursae rest at the points where internal functionaries, such as muscles and tendons, slide across bone. Healthy bursae create a smooth, almost frictionless functional gliding surface making normal movement painless. When bursitis occurs, however, movement relying upon the inflamed bursa becomes difficult and painful. Moreover, movement of tendons and muscles over the inflamed bursa aggravates its inflammation, perpetuating the problem.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Formica shades of gray

Walking shoe and Formica chips

Rooting around in a disorganized teacher box in search of a piggy finger puppet I find a cache of Formica samples circa 1965. Give myself  The Talking To where I insist that something I haven't needed or even known existed should be thrown out in the interest of leaving less mess for my kids should I happen to die. Then I talk back to myself and whine.

I fail to put myself in Time Out.  Instead I reach a compromise whereby I keep the gray samples since they are relevant to an ongoing discussion, and chuck the others in the dumpster.

The Formica samples provided some further names for gray:

Bunny grays

haze
platinum
seagull
stardust
white kid leather

Newport, Oregon beach in December

ninja
orchid
optix
graceful oak
ice
surf




Just getting warmed up to the challenge plus inspired by Formica, I add these shade suggestions:

Very large sauerkraut crock

crock
tomato cage
bubble wrap
mystery meat
Duct tape
mockingbird
junco
freezer burn

Hairstreak butterfly

window screens
retro diner
comfy sweats
nap-time tantrum
no bars of service
mirror
shining armor
flashlight batteries
Velcro
wasp nest

Rock and roll is here to stay

fan oscillations
typewriter ribbon
Tut's tomb
tar pit
rocks
aspen bark
tumbleweed
windmill

Remote grays

Miss Haversham
sorry old guys' nasty undershirts
Brillo
air quality alert
technology
obituary
socket set

VCR gray

coming down with something
paper shredder
cable service outage
coin collection
dog-eared textbook

Hindenburg
tax return
charm bracelet
armadillo
clean the grill

Scared of the basement gray

furnace filter
tinted window
dryer lint
cafeteria fork
Mt. St. Helen's
required reading
sensible shoes
emery board
Dragnet
stink bug

Pale bucket gray

lichen
safe deposit box
pewter
tarnished
Edward R. Murrow
toad
cream of mushroom soup
mercury

Lichen or not

but fear itself
jammed stapler
fish scales
snowed-in

teen car oil spot
utensil
Stonehenge

Cozy afghan knit sofa snoozy gray

AV club
pencil shavings
galvanized bucket
pocket protector

dried Elmer's
firework snakes
desert lizard

toenail fungus

Fritzi's wastebasket

aging Tupperware
sink caulk
laundromat
padlock
snowplow
wet mitten
small kitten


© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Robots, babies, and proof

What is real?  What has value? What is pre-wired? What is learned? What is hacked? Where are the authorities? Who decides what's authentic? What requires bifocals? ... Hearning aids?

When we pull the cloth out from under the silver and china why is there no table?

I'm on a non-fiction reading kick.  This week I'm tackling Modris Eksteins's Solar Dance, and finding much for rumination. Could be, though, the grass is AstroTurf.  Or the grass could be half-empty. Or the cow might have a stomach porthole:

 In Modris Eksteins’s hands, the interlocking stories of Vincent van Gogh and art dealer Otto Wacker reveal the origins of the fundamental uncertainty that is the hallmark of the modern era.

Wacker's forged Van Goghs did much to popularize the artist's work, and to drive the prices skyward--the faux promoting the genuine. We live in a world of designer knock-offs and bootlegs, where the genuine promote the faux. As happened at Wacker's trial and appeal, the testimony of "experts" got so convoluted it seemed the faux genuine was promoting the genuine faux.  Say, is that a real fake Rolex?

 Behind our daily life skitters a  backdrop of doubt.  We need to check for security updates and run scans.  Our suspicious outlook could be our only salvation.

This morning I listened to an NPR segment about people teaching a robotic baby to talk.  This evening I'm unable to convince the same online story that I am not a robot myself.  I flunked two visual robot tests, then attempted my first ever audio robot challenge. Ouch.  I did much worse sorting and typing the audio robot quiz words amidst the babble. I'm pretty sure I got "fried egg", "Sunday", "rectangle", and "scissors", but that was inadequate.

Coworkers and friends send me email links in the middle of the night. Don't they have to be at work at 8:30?  Why are they up so late? Didn't I just see them yesterday? How could they have already lost their passports and need me to wire them money? Their addresses are not their own.

And you, too. You aren't real. Symantec said so, so it must be so. You must be very popular! Norton will not let me into any of your blogs. Maybe it's a fake Norton protecting me from the real McCoy.

Fraudulent Web Page Blocked You attempted to access: http://kathleenkirkpoetry.blogspot.com/ This web page is a known fraudulent web page. It is recommended that you do NOT visit this page. For your protection, this web page has been blocked. Visit Symantec to learn more about phishing and internet security.  Well, it is Sunday morning now. The world is washed clean. Your web pages are no longer fraudulent. The experts have spoken.  And they said, "Danger, Will Robinson!" © 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Stile queen reverie

Not crossing over the fence in the photo, but sitting atop the stile. A rare photo of me from that era when I was the family snapshot taker. The SLR camera was new, so '91 or '92, an extravagant gift from my husband who wanted it himself and bought with time payments. First roll of black and white film out at Connemara. Oddly calm, almost bemused, pleased with my aviator sunglasses and bargain tan mohair cardigan, and for one tiny second sure my three sons are not breaking arms or legs or needing stitches. All the anxiety seems to be stored in that skinny, clasping wrist.

A stile is an arrangement to allow passage for creatures smarter than sheep and cows. Today I barely qualify, having left the wrong key when I dropped off my car for service. The stile photo is part of a collage about myself made a few years later while I was climbing over the fence of divorce, so '96 or '97. It hangs on the wall behind a door that's always open, so I'd forgotten the stile collage.

The collage is glued to a blueprint, appropriately.  My engineer parents created my blueprint, and regularly inspected the construction site. It is in heavy-duty laminating done by Kinko's that cost a fortune.  I hadn't asked the price, and was horrified to be spending the grocery money on laminating.  The collage was to be a talking-piece at my session with the therapist, but now I would have the dragonfly encased in amber forever.

Today I would say I'm still not over the fence, but I am not immobilized in amber or otherwise. I've supported several people making their passage to new meadows. I've watched hawks, bats, and scissortails swoop, hummingbirds and herons feed. My wrist is not so bony, and the hand not so clenched. I'm still borderline panicked about the grocery money.

Thanks to Kathleen for the image and poem that provoked this meditation. Thanks, too, to my extrovert sister, the Nebraska 4-H Style Queen winner. What year was that?

stile 

O.E. stigel "device for climbing, ladder," related to stigen "to climb," from P.Gmc. *stig- "to climb," (see stair). An arrangement to allow persons to pass but not sheep and cattle.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Worm poetry with professional input

Between Buds and corn

on the cob in the fridge three

nightcrawler boxes

One nightcrawler box on the counter.

Okay, sort of hokey haiku, but hey, it's National Poetry Month and I'm running out of time.  Danced the worm Hokey Pokey with 4-5 year olds at my worm show Thursday morning.  

This post has had an edit thanks to input from Kathleen who said...

I love the nightcrawler boxes in the fridge!!

Kathleen did not say the other hokey haiku did not work, but it didn't take long after reading her comment to realize they did not.  That's why she is a real live professional poet and I am a worm lady.  Alas.

Never got around to grilling the corn last night after talking to the probate attorney and trying to understand what is going on with my registered domain name.*  You will just have to envision the cornsilk in the plastic grocery bag.  And the Buds are gone.  Today I took the three bait boxes to school and the preschoolers released the nightcrawlers into our garden.  Twenty-five of twenty-six students were brave enough to hold a worm.  The worms were pleased to get out of the boxes and into perfect worm weather--dark, humid, cool with rain approaching.  They put on a splendid movement and tunneling exhibition for the children. 

Then we found this tiny moth on the lock to the playground toy chest:.  A few kids liked the sound of "lock moth" so they stomped and staggered around chanting

lock moth

lock moth

lock moth

lock moth

lock moth

Just glad they didn't form a conga line.

lock moth lock moth LOCK MOTH!

lock moth lock moth LOCK MOTH!

During the Q&A at the worm show a mom asked if there were really one thousand red wigglers in a pound.  Yup. Then a pre-K teacher asked how I separate my worms from the humus they have made so I can use that good dirt.  I said on a Friday evening after a really rough week in the preschool I go home and sit on my laundry room floor with my worm bin and I pull the worms out, count them, and put them into a different bin.  After about five hundred worms I feel much better.  Blood pressure and respiration normal.  The earth even seems to be spinning properly on its axis.

1 red wiggler 

2 red wigglers 3 red wigglers 

4 red wigglers 5 red wigglers 6 red wigglers

*The estate doesn't have a domain name.  These are separate issues, although they are both opened cans of worms.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

When bass use the crosswalk and the candidate washes his shirt

Why didn't Mitt just put his shirt on the car roof with the dog and drive through the carwash? Why didn't he do the sniff test and just squirt Febreez on the least worst shirt like any teenage guy?  The man makes me miss McCain, for heaven's sake!


I admit to once washing out my kids' Ghostbusters underpants and drying them overnight atop the a/c in a Wichita motel.  The vacation ran long because of car repairs and a broken arm.  BUT GEEZ! THIS MAN IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT and he can't look long range enough to send some local volunteer to the mall! He wants to play chess on the big board???  

So my sympathies go out to all the comparatively normal Illinois bloggers.  There were more fisherman than presidential candidates out at Oak Point Nature Preserve after our 4+ inches of rain in twenty-four hours.  


This father and son were fishing on the dam while water drained across the walk into a runoff stream.  It looked like a golden memory moment.  Suddenly there was a whoop and holler.  I was afraid the dad had lost the lad in the overflow rush.  Nope, the dad was whooping because a "fourteen inch bass just swam across the sidewalk."  Taking traditional fisherman measurement exaggerations into account, that was still a good surprise and a golden moment.

And yes, that is kale.  Scanned it because the camera was behaving badly.  Even if your old dog is on the car roof, it can still learn new tricks.  Never had kale before in my whole live-long life, but the minestrone recipe called for kale.  And it was good.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

we could string them and hang them from a tree

Found this post in my dregs/draft list. I have no idea who or what I was going to string and hang from a tree last December when I started it. Still the title is fitting for this day which was both the last day of class before Spring Break AND school picture day. Yup, individual, staff, and class photos with a whole lotta saying "cheese" and trying to get little kids to remove their index fingers from their nostrils for just a couple seconds.

Any week requiring verbal reminders that paper towels must not be put in the toilet isn't going to merit a twinkly star.  A twinkly star was as good as it got at Eastridge Elementary. The reward and incentive budget was very low and counter to the education philosophy of our principal, Miss Baker.  A student's paper might merit a check, a plus, a star, or a twinkly star from the teacher.

I would have done absolutely anything so Mrs. Erickson or Mrs. Meier could draw pencil "twinkly star" on my first and second grade papers.  Color inside the lines.  Put on my own overshoes.  Solve arithmetic problems on the blackboard in front of the whole class. Rat out Bobby Tooley for some infraction. Erase blackboards. Play Red Rover and run right on over into Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers.  Anything for those two teachers' approval! Most of all I wanted their smiles and attention while they drew that star.

I took piano lessons from a long-suffering neighborhood woman we called "Mrs. Bath Oil". That poor woman received $1.25 for spending a half hour with me, tapping the beat on the keys with her personalized pencils (ANNA MARY BATHEL Instuctor of Piano and Organ), listening to my dismal efforts, and putting lick-on stickers and stars in my music and theory books.  Geez, what a person had to do for $1.25 in the late Sixties!

Tears would run down my cheeks the whole thirty minutes. "I am afraid your daughter does not care for the piano," Mrs. Bath Oil told my mother over the phone after a couple years of our mutual suffering.

Mom didn't give me the option of quitting piano lessons, but we did eventually figure out that my watering, red eyes during lessons were caused by the combination of Mrs. Bath Oil's hairspray, perfume, cigarette smoke, and houseful of cats. Her tears were due to my lack of any progress whatsoever at the keyboard.

This all has to do with stickers and incentives. If Mrs. Bath Oil and I both managed to get through my playing of a song in the Schaum Piano Book she put a sticker on that page. Should I play most of the notes of a piece in the Thompson Piano Book I got a foil star, usually silver. More gifted students merited the gold, blue, red, and green stars.

No promise of a sticker or star could ever make me remotely musical. I just did my time, practicing thirty minutes every morning before school because doing so was not optional.

If my smallest students settle down and fall asleep within half an hour I give them a sticker when they wake up.  If they don't, I don't. Lab rats have to at least press the lever to get the M&Ms.

The other Nap Lady gives every student two or three stickers after naptime just for being their own itty-bitty selves whether they settled down or not.  Her philosophy is, "When you grow up there are lots of things you want but don't get, so you should always get stickers when you are young." I lean toward the life is not a bowl of cherries so the tough get going and learn to not swallow the pits, and you might as well figure that out earlier rather than later.

You don't get the tiara for just showing up, and you have to eat the cereal to find the decoder ring. Oooh!  Life is so demanding!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Dog and macaw show

Flashback to last Friday--Oh, how can it be almost a week ago already? I took a break from sitting beside Dad's bed, and entrusted him over to the care of the round-the-clock nurse.  Got a Subway sandwich and drove to my favorite Plano park.  Starting down the trail I saw a young family soaking up the sunshine on this beautiful afternoon:

• Two parents lounging on an old quilt next to a cooler
• One toddler sitting up in a patch of grass under the watchful eye of a small dog
• One preschooler sitting in a little red wagon supervised by a big dog

The scene did more for me than the sandwich, and I set off on a quick walk around the lake.  Circling back toward the Buick the family scene got even better:

• Dad throwing a frisbee for the small dog to the delight of the toddler
• Mom flying a gorgeous macaw kite
• Big dog pulling the red wagon and preschooler around in circles in the meadow

"That's a great kite," I hollered at the mom, craning my neck and squinting up into the bright blue sky.  "Twelve dollars at Costco," she hollered back.

Back beside Dad under the hypnotic spell of the respirator, I wondered about the meaning of "dog and pony show".  In my experience it is used to mean the peons are trotting out their whole underfunded bag of tricks to entertain an entitled,  blasé  audience.  The dog and macaw experience seemed gloriously authentic. If I'd had more time I would have requested a ride in the wagon!

I still remember my dad taking me to watch many kite-flyers at Pioneers Park.  Dad flew a basic Ben Franklin Five & Dime box kite, red and green.  There were so many flyers I can't imagine how they stayed untangled.

I read The Kite Runner in Dad's hospital room five years ago, after he broke his hip the second time. It was a time suspended without night or day, tangled between reality and hallucination.  This vigil I read Elmore Leonard's new Raylan, which was not so deep.  Elmore Leonard is still writing entertaining crime dialogue at age eighty-six.  I hope I'm still blogging about kites in 2041!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

The hero or the goat

You blog long enough and you eventually write about goats.  Yesterday on a whim I pinned my mother's silver goat pin on my shirt, just thinking the preschoolers might like it.  Plus, teaching preschool is a whole lot like herding goats or cats or turtles on a rainy Monday.

The children were entirely too busy smearing snozz on every surface to notice my goat pin.  By naptime I was sooo glad to sit in the dark room and listen to the gurgles and snurgles of wee noses accompanied by one of our favorite/effective nap cds.  Gather Round is a Starbucks recording that includes Willie Nelson singing "I'm My Own Grandpa".  Trying to sort out the family relations in this song always makes my brain drowsy.

Speaking of family relations, I am still trying to make the decision to move my dad into a double room.  "Good grief! How did I ever get into this?"  I ask this question every time I have to deal with Dad's finances, feeling like Charlie Brown standing out on the pitching mound in the downpour.  Will I be the hero or the goat?  I'd be glad just to not be the troll under the bridge.


But back to goats, I've temporarily lost my copy of Gregory the Terrible Eater.  Gregory is an average goat except he doesn't like to eat tin cans.  Gregory would be a model recycler.  He could even advise the condo complex residents about proper recycling practices.

Spell Check has been giving me grief about my spelling of "advisor".  My eldest son has been a college adviser/advisor for several years, and he explains that institutions of higher learning make their own spelling rules for this matter.  My Big Red Dictionary reminds me that advice is a noun and advise is a verb.  Good grief!  It seems to be a vulgar transitory desiderative with past participles:

Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember these items should not be placed in your condo recycling carts:

• paint cans
• rubber welcome mats
• greasy Kentucky Fried Chicken leftovers.  Ewwww!
• Styrofoam cups, egg cartons, and packing "peanuts"
• dirty furnace filters
• moldy, disintegrating carpet padding
• ugly chandeliers
• pet poop
• light bulbs
• curtain rods
• documents that included credit card and Social Security numbers.  Oops!
• clothes and toys
• wire hangers
• dead houseplants
• bamboo wind chimes
• hundred dollar bills

Let the goat eat them instead.  (And that goat is a classic Provensen illustration for The Color Kittens. It convinced me for a dozen years of childhood that goats really ate tin cans and ONLY tin cans.)

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

"Your blog is too wide."

Only a true friend would say that to your face.  Does this template make me look fat?  Please let me know if you can't fit my blog on your screen.

"Your hair is too scary.  You look like an electrified Chia pet."  At the staff holiday white elephant gift exchange I received a Prussian blue (old Crayola color) comfy-huggie-snuglee-cuddly blanket-with-sleeves.  The fabric is amazing.  It does NOT breathe.

I fell asleep on the couch watching "Midnight in Paris" under the blanket-with-sleeves.  What happened to Owen Wilson's nose? I need to spend more time in waiting rooms with old People magazines so I know what's what. As a person with deviated septum issues, I kept fixating on the nose.  Also, he walked like a guy I had a crush on once.  Sigh.

There were some great costumes and cars, but the movie was sadly ordinary.  Never thought I'd see the day when some input from Rodney Dangerfield could improve a Woody Allen movie. I pulled the comfy-huggie-snuglee-cuddly up over my head.

Woke up in 2012.  Maybe it will be a new Belle Époque.  More likely just it's another era of Chia pet hair.

Praise be.  It's 2012.

Resolution #4--Stay more informed about pop culture.  

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder