Obituary for the iron

Fans of the Monopoly iron wept in their beers tonight after Hasbro announced that game piece was voted off the board. There were no reports of protests or rioting, but my choreographer sister expressed fans' indignation in a text message:

This is an outrage. The iron slid across the board with grace.


So well said.  It's unlikely my epitaph will be so uplifting.  It will probably be more like:

She languished half-charred in the greasy hell at the bottom of the stove burner drip pan.

My little students are unlikely to be able to identify an iron, steam or flat.  They don't even know the word "stove".

The Monopoly iron slid along the board, as did the cannon.  The other pieces had to be tapped along to count out one's roll of the dice. I flopped down on the floor and peered under the bed, but my Sixties era Monopoly game was not there.  Seems like after Norton the rabbit hopped under the bed to nibble the box and eat the $500 bills I moved the game somewhere "safer".  But where?  Probably under the stairs and beneath the boxed up fake Christmas tree.  I blog for truth, freedom, and vintage game board pieces, but I'm not moving the sofa to haul out the Christmas tree to find Monopoly.

Clue was under the bed instead. Will we be voting to change the deadly weapons next? Or will we send Colonel Mustard into exile?

On a different tack, my tie dye experiment results were underwhelming.

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder

Professor Plum in the Preschool Potty with a Plunger

For only the second week of school, we already have a lot of body fluids in play. Any day that begins with a plunger is likely to be underpaid and skiing downhill fast.

You don't want me to elaborate.  Really.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Gabriel Garcia Marquez checks his rain gauge

Can't prove any of it happened. Maybe it was all dreams in another night of restlessness occasionally interrupted by sleep. But if it was a dream, where was the overloaded moving van, the treks through snakely rock ravines, the  incomprehensible bus schedules, the cafeteria line lacking trays, those Persion carpet flying rollerblades, unprepared art lessons, unwritten term papers, lost keys, brakeless cars, unlockable doors, and recurring crumbling teeth?










But still, it seemed like it rained today right when the preschoolers were going back inside from the playground.  Did we or did we not let plump drops fall on our heads, arms, and even tongues? Did we sniff the scent of precipitation on the air? Later did we really find that eighth of an inch of water in the rain gauge?

The anole was first spotted last evening on the parrot wind toy munching a transparent insect that didn't quite fit in its mouth. "Please chew with your mouth closed," I ask the five and six year olds to little avail.  "Please stand quite still so I can photograph you," I ask the little anole.

That's about when my Canon stopped working, so I suspect the lizard is magic. It has a white horn sticking up from its snout.  I've spotted it twice on the patio today. I pray the white protuberance is not just a massive nose goobie. We have plenty of those at school. A rain totem animal is what we need.

If all of the raindrops

Were lemon drops and gumdrops
Oh, if all of the raindrops
Were lemon drops and gumdrops
Oh, what a rain that would be!
I'd sit outside, with my mouth open wide
Singing La la la la, la la la...

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Candy Land and the chips fall where they may

It ain't May.  Everywhere I walked this week the chips were falling.  Late afternoon sun made the dried leaves and grasses especially golden.  This photo shows the Willow Springs Trail at Oak Point Nature Preserve and Park here in Plano, Texas.

Took a long mental health walk there Wednesday, and came away pretty crazed for potato chips and Mom's sour cream dip made with a Good Seasons Italian dressing packet, preferably with a cold Fresca containing cyclamates and an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea on the black and white t.v. David Hedison as Commander Lee Crane was my first t.v. crush, which might be why I enjoy a Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt ocean adventure now and then.  Shhhhh!  Please don't tell.

"Causes cancer in rats" took my Fresca away in 1969, which was already a very weird year.  I blamed the rats, and Nixon, of course.

I scuffed along the chip trail, no Pringles or Baked Lays thank you very much, remembering my 1950s era Candy Land game board with the Valentine hearts, candy canes, gum drops, spooky brittle witch house, lollipop lane, molasses swamp, and gingerbread house.  Where was the Canyon of Potato Chips?




© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Hornworm dominoes and horse hoof care

We haven't found any hornworms on the tomato plants for two days now.  It is too hot to stay outside very long, so we have to find new amusements. 

The preschoolers are learning to play picture dominoes around a big table. I made the set of photo dominoes a few years back, but the kids just rediscovered them.

Around the table sit a ruffle of four year old girls, the strawberry/goat boy, the Chinese three year old, and two  large, sweaty eight year old boys banished by the elementary teacher.  The domino cards are big and the children are small.  Matching a card at the end of the domino "snake" can involve an aerobic journey around the table.

Our small Chinese student is sharp matching images.  She's learning English very quickly.  She can say, "I don't think so!," when asked to do something. And she knows the essential little girl phrase, "I'm a princess."

The essential word for today is farrier.  It popped up while I was filing Dad's yellow fingernails:

A farrier is a specialist in equine hoof care, including the trimming and balancing of horses' hooves and the placing of shoes on their hooves. A farrier combines some blacksmith's skills (fabricating, adapting, and adjusting metal shoes) with some veterinarian's skills (knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of the lower limb) to care for horses' feet.--Wikipedia

Dad was very excited when I arrived this evening, as he had decided I was the one to take him "home".  Supper first, Dad.  Ravioli and canned peaches.  If I speared bites on the fork, Dad was game to pilot the fork to his mouth.

What's next, Dad wondered.  Should he pack?  He had flipped his sheet and blanket onto the floor and is wearing just a shirt and a diaper.  The tiny Chinese girl wears the same outfit at naptime.

I distract Dad by getting a hot washcloth to clean his hands after the ravioli.  I offer to put Vick's on his fungus-afflicted fingernails, but he asks me to clip them.  Aarrgh!  He screamed the last time I tried.  I don't have the proper hoof-nippers for the job.  True, Dad looks like an Asian Dragon Empress with his long nails, and they are full of gunk.  For what we are paying for skilled care, Madge should be soaking his fingers in Joy.  Wish I'd brought my Sears Craftsman power sander.

Huh?  This photo is borrowed from a farrier website. I need those leg protectors, hoof-nippers, and giant rasps.  I promise Dad I would work more tomorrow on his nails.









© 2011 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

We did not quibble over tokens

Dividing a houseful of personal property isn't going to be pretty.  You will need allergy pills and eye drops for the dust.  You will need an industrial strength sense of humor, and a tolerance for spiders.  Buy the three-pack of Office Depot packing tape.  You won't believe how much tape you will need.

The process brings out the best and worst in siblings, but we made it through with only one big misunderstanding. My third of the loot is now in Texas.  The curse of generations continues.  Someday my sons and their ladies will have to deal with this stuff.  They will roll their eyes.  I know because I did some major eye rolls with my sister over my parents' incredible random acumulations. 

My living room is filled with boxes.  One of those boxes holds the green houses and red hotels from a Monopoly game.  My sister thought I would need the Chance cards, but not the deeds.  She wants me to broker a deal where I send our brother the race car token so he might send her the iron or thimble token for old times' sake. 

Another box holds marbles, dominoes, and Mom's Scrabble game.  Quibble starts with a ten-point letter.  Avoiding major arguments is priceless.  

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Go Tell Aunt Rhody

Exhibit(A) One lucky duck

Jaap van Zweden conducted the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven's Sixth and Fifth Symphonies one Thursday evening last fall, and I WAS THERE. I was a lucky duck. Sure beats being the old gray goose.

In second grade Mrs. Wolcott taught us to open our American Singer songbooks (Second Edition, Book Two) to the page with "Go Tell Aunt Rhodey".

Welcome to Mortality 101. We live. We die. Doesn't matter if you are a goose or a person. That's just the Dragnet facts. It was harsh, but by second grade most of us had experienced the death and flushing of a goldfish that had been so foolish as to leap out of the bowl. We were tough. We could take it. We were big. We were in second grade!


Exhibit(B) The American Singer, Second Edition, Book Four, c1954.

Go tell Aunt Rhody, go tell Aunt Rhody
Go tell Aunt Rhody, the old gray goose is dead
The one she's been saving
The one she's been saving
The one she's been saving
To make a feather bed

I don't own Book Two with all the verses we learned as kids. Just have the brief entry from Book Four. My recollection is of verses for the days of the week. Something along the lines of "died last Friday", "mourned on Saturday", "plucked on Sunday", "buried on Monday".

The students are learning in music class that folk songs are passed down aurally, and that folk songs have different versions. It's possible to spend an incredible amount of time googling about Aunt Rhody and the unfortunate deceased goose. You can even find verses where Aunt Rhody makes goose sausages. And that ain't pate de foie gras, baby.

You still won't be able to pin down the goose-slayer, the murder weapon, or even the scene of the crime. It was not Colonel Mustard in the parlor with the candlestick! Sources who prefer to remain anonymous will contribute tips about a millpond, a toothache, a perverse tendency to stand on one's head, a distraught gander, and emotionally-neglected goslings scooped up by Child Protective Services.

Folk songs change. They seem to grow, to travel, to woo, to wed, and then beget. They invite improvisation and parody to all their tailgate parties. Names change often, like your first husband's cousin Debi who married Dave when she was just out of high school, then divorced him to marry Bob who worked at the Chevy dealership. She ran off with Chuck, and then changed her name to Debbi, always dotting the i with a little heart. Eventually she divorced Bob, even before she finished her massage-therapy mail correspondence course, to remarry Dave. Nevermind about the twins she had with Chuck. But then she met Buck at the senior center bingo night/potluck and took up with him. He called her "Little Debby", and she didn't ever inform him otherwise. She just waved goodbye to Dave from the back of Buck's Harley. Last we heard, she was setting up amps for Grateful Dead tribute groups and wearing lots of tie-dye.

Or maybe that was Aunt Roadie. Aunt Rhody is just as likely to be using an alias--Aunt Tabby, Aunt Susie, even Aunt Nancy.

The mysterious part of the song is the identity and role of Aunt Rhodey, aka Rhody or Rhodie. Who is she? Why must we go tell her? Who is Aunt Rhody to the old gray goose, or the old gray goose to her? Are we supposed to weep? Should we rejoice that Aunt Rhody can now pluck the duck for the feather bed? Is this some sort of Madhatter Hamlet? And do geese have teeth? Maybe they just have serrated steak knives they got at Jerry's Sinclair station back during the Gas Wars of the Sixties. Goat tell ant Rhody how I loved the aroma of leaded gas in those day. That was before the goose had that aching in her head.

"What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her?"
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2.2

Having spent two 1966 dollars in Estes Park, Colorado for a touristy giftshop rock set, I know that rhodonite is a pinkish mineral that often has black spots. Aunt Rhody might be a baby name from the time when folks named their girls "Pearl", "Opal", "Ruby", and "Diamond". Or pyrite, fools' gold.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Blokus Pocus

Blokus is a great game for kids and adults. Alas, it does not rhyme with hocus or pocus. It's still magic. The board is a grid, and I love grids. The pieces are colored transparent plastic contiguous squares, and I love colored transparent rectangles and squares. Preschoolers can play it, and AARP members won't be bored:

Blokus is an abstract strategy game with transparent, tetris-shaped, colored pieces that players are trying to play onto the board. The only caveat to placing a piece is that it may not lie adjacent to your other pieces, but instead must be placed touching at least one corner of your pieces already on the board.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Rolling in Dough

I did not pass Go. I did not collect two hundred dollars. I've got lots of dough, though.

Friday afternoon I was seized with the urge to make the ground beef and the head of red cabbage I had on hand into runzas. I had a recipe from the Minnesotans for Nebraska web page celebrating that distinctly Nebraskan taste treat, the runza. A runza is ground beef, chopped cabbage, and diced onions "cooked down". The mixture is scooped onto a rolled out square of bread dough, then folded into a pillow, and baked. I replaced the onions with pepper and celery, then got a bit carried away with seasonings. Following recipes has never been my long suit.

I left Steven a message to pick up four loaves of frozen bread dough on the way home from work. Instead, he brought four packages, each containing three loaves. So I've got yer dough! I will be able to make many more test batches of runzas before I can fit anything else in my freezer.

Monopoly has been on my mind all week. I teach with a woman who will also hit the big fifty mark this year. We learned to play Monopoly in 1962. We were comparing our Barbie dolls. We both had the red-headed Midge doll with the flip hairdo. Midge was always my favorite, more friendly, playful, and approachable than my rather stern-looking brunette bouffant Barbie. We agreed that red-headed Midge dolls were never ever allowed to wear the magenta ballgowns. It was an unwritten law. We are both surprised when little red-heads come to class in magenta outfits. Alas, their mothers are way too young to have had flip hair-do Midge dolls, and so they just don't understand the law!

My brother has been driving to visit my dad every weekend. In my mind's eye, he is driving the silver racing car from the Monopoly set. He always used the race car. He always amassed all the cheap purple and light blue properties, improved them to the max, then made the rest of us go bankrupt paying rents. My sister usually chose the shoe/slipper. She was fond of the red and green properties because they were such nice colors. If we could convince my mom to play on a snow day off from school, she used the thimble or the iron game piece. I generally used the cannon game piece even though I wasn't sure what it was. It was just the easiest to slide around the board. That left the hat, ship, and dog for guests.

Midge always looked drop dead gorgeous in this green party dress. It's sad that the matching open-toed high heels wore out from dancing with Ken. I always wanted to own Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Pacific Avenue, and Monopoly strategy be damned.

A dearly demented friend reported recently that she had to go break up a fight between her sons. Her youngest always wants all the yellow properties; Marvin Gardens, Ventnor, and Atlantic, but her older son had bought them up. Was it a matter of strategy that the youngest always wanted the yellows, in the way it was strategy for my brother to buy up Baltic and Mediterranean? Oh, no. It is because that particular yellow, henceforth known as Parker Brothers Yellow, is Henry's favorite. He would give his brother anything he owns, including his bedroom, to hold those yellow deeds.

When Henry was in my preschool class he would tell me about the continents. The continents were completely linked in his mind to the colors of the pieces on his world map picture puzzle. When he grows up he will probably become the world's foremost expert on European geopolitics, and it will be because Europe was the yellow continent on his map puzzle when he was three.

Everyday on my walk to and from Millard Lefler Junior High School I passed a green Camaro convertible. It was beautiful. The Camaro didn't radiate macho speed and power. It seemed to me more of a magical vehicle, like a leprechaun's magic carpet gliding just above the dew-laden grass in springtime. Although I would rather own a 1961 red and white Plymouth Sport Fury with rectangular steering wheel and push-button transmission, the 1969 green Camaro with the white convertible roof is my second choice.



For some people, choices are about strategy and power. For the rest of us, it's all about the color!

Paint Chip Off the Old Block

I love to play with paint color chips. Still. Yeh, I know, I'm nearly fifty. I still pick them up and stuff them in my purse at the paint department of Home Depot or Elliott's Hardware. I hope no one will ask me what I'm planning to paint, how many gallons I'll need, or whether I want flat or semi-gloss latex. It's hard to explain that I just want to spread the samples out on a table and rearrange them in different designs.

A friend at the ballet last night asked me what else fun and exciting I had planned for the weekend. "I'm not the parent-on-duty this weekend, for a change," I said. "I can stay wrapped in blankets and read, or write. I can fool around with my Photoshop program. I can eat burritos for breakfast if I choose. I can smell freshly ironed clothes while I watch the Bogart movie my son gave me for Christmas. I can play with colors, textures, and lines." I don't know if she understood that I considered these options fun and exciting. Play and contentment are sometimes about being instead of doing. Sometimes in the game of Life we recharge with champagne bubbles and fireworks, and other times with purring cats and simmering soups.


I'm especially fond of the paint chip books with perforated pages. The pages are dry to the touch, and the chalky scent catches at the back of my throat. Fold on the perforations, and carefully tear the little rectangles into Candy Land sidewalks, carnival tickets, Chance, Community Chest, and Monopoly play money. Lie on your stomach on the rug in the living room on a rainy day, arranging a color mosaic, and listening to "April in Paris". Plan gardens of colors separated by gray flagstones that need no trowel. Quilts that need no sewing. Be still and dream.

We had lots of color samples for paints and tiles growing up. I always considered them treasures and BIG perks of my dad's job as a structural engineer in an architectural firm. Kids felt sorry for me because I didn't have a Chatty Cathy. I felt sorry for them because they didn't have tile samples.

My students of all ages have been playing with circles inside squares this week to create magic maps based on board games. The inspiration comes from two books I love to read aloud to kids (even twenty times in one week), Circle Dogs, by Kevin Henkes, and You Are Here, by Nina Crews.


So many wonderful winter hours spent with board games at the family dining table--checkers, chess, dominoes, Chutes & Ladders, Candy Land, Monopoly, Memory, Chinese checkers, pop-a-matic Trouble, and my mom's beloved Scrabble. Visualize tic-tac-toe and Twister, too.

You sank my battleship!

Better Living Through Billiards

My youngest managed to fit time for billiards practice in the UNM Student Union into his campus visit yesterday while waiting for his academic interviews and departmental tours. Alas, he forgot to take his own cue. It would have been an easy carry-on.

My dad enjoyed hearing about his grandson's trip to Albuquerque, and also about the senior high school billiards club's adventures. Looks like Steverooni may get to travel to a tournament in Michigan next summer since he's the high scorer on the newly-formed team. Yes, Minnesota Fats and Texas Slim battling it out in Michigan...


While the Friday Lunch Gang was here this noon for roast beef sandwiches and tomato soup he got a call from a reporter for the school newspaper. Since half of the Mens and Ladies billiards teams, including the founders, were sitting around my dining table there was a lot of raucous "helping" with the interview. Most of the quotes won't be printable! As Howie says, it's all in the angle of incidence. I'm glad his grandson got that gene, since it definitely skipped me. The closest I get to a Billiards Room is with Colonel Mustard with the lead pipe.

Optional consumerism

As a very young Cornhusker football fan, just after the dinosaurs died out, I was impressed that the Kansas State fans had lavender toilet paper to toss down onto the football field at Memorial Stadium. Nowadays I am frustrated by the search required to find some plain white or recycled brown paper towels amid the tacky purple drawings of herbs and tea cups. It's just a paper towel for wiping up spills, not a personal aesthetic statement for heavens sake!

My young students often come to blows just to get the pairs of hot pink Fiskars scissors. "Scissors are a tool," I say. "It doesn't matter what color they are. It matters how you use them." I tell my high school senior son that it doesn't matter where he goes to college. It matters how he applies his abilities when he gets there.

We are overwhelmed with choices that are so often insignificant. In my spells of depression I've been unable to choose between cans of stewed tomatoes or Milton Bradley games for birthday party gifts. I've been sucked into panic attacks when I had to order from a menu. The first time I saw a "designer" switchplate cover I felt a jolt of future shock. We are so caught up in choices for meaningless items that we accomplish nothing. Go to a mall, and you will see the buzzards of meaningless choice soaring on the hot air up-drafts above the asphalt parking lot watching for dead meat.

I wasted time today searching out personal checks that reflect the real me. I have been reflecting the real me with Audubon bird checks for several boxes now, but they were a luxury I can't really justify. Just for one day it would be interesting to work the check-out lane at the grocery store to see what checks people buy----Sponge Bob with Bible verses. Most of the choices look like the cheapo kitchen towels at the Dollar Store. I ended up with some dragonfly checks that don't contribute any money to a nonprofit cause. I couldn't find any checks with perimenopausal women peering over their bifocals telling the baggers to carry the $108 of groceries out to the Buick. I'd like to mail my gas bill off with a check proclaiming "Hot flashes save energy", but I can't even find checks that Shave the Whale.

What I really wish is that all checks would remind us that we vote our conscience with every dollar we spend. Choose wisely.

Cole Porter

Enjoyed looking at some road maps from the Fifties and Sixties last week. I got a kick out of the Skelly and Sinclair maps. We didn't buy gas at the Skelly station when I was a kid, but we did go to Jerry's Sinclair on the northeast corner at 48th and Randolph. As kids, we lusted after the Sinclair inflatable Dino dinosaurs displayed in the window.

The movie "De Lovely" has renewed interest in the music of Cole Porter. That was the music I grew up with. I would lounge on the wall-to-wall carpet near the hi-fi trying to memorize the witty lyrics. On Sunday evenings, very late, like eight o'clock, I think, after Ed Sullivan, we would watch the "Dinah Shore Show". Of course my younger siblings would already be asleep in crib or bassinet. This was Big Girl Time! This was time for Skyline Dairy Swiss Almond Ice Cream.

So, to get back on track, I bought a cd of authentic Cole Porter recordings last week. It included Dinah Shore singing, "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To". I really only remembered her singing, "See the USA in your Chevrolet!," and twirling about in a satin gown in front of a car the size of Delaware. I was little. I was pretty sure Dinah Shore was somewhere in the kitchen strumming on an old banjo.

During a big blizzard in about 1965, my dad had to get back to Eastridge from downtown Lincoln. He was able to inch the pea-green '54 Chevy to somewhere near 40th and J Street before it got stuck. He left the car, and headed out on foot wading through the over-the-knee drifted snow. He trekked through the Tabitha Home area and over to Jerry's Sinclair.

Meanwhile, back at the Strauss House Eastridge ranch, we were playing Chutes and Ladders and working jigsaw puzzles on folding card tables in the living room. We were very worried about Daddy, lost out there on the Siberian tundra! Remember the first time you watched "Dr. Zhivago"? It was a thrilling moment when we caught sight of an Abdominal Snowman slowly making its way from Cotner Blvd. through the poplar and pine trees into our backyard. Daddy was home! Our hero! Our frosty daddy, just as brave as those Friendship Seven astronauts we watched on the only tv* at Eastridge Elementary!

By the way, I am so old I remember Gas Wars and 21 cents a gallon gas. Usually the guy who pumped our gas also offered us free steak knives, or tropical-hued thermal tumblers, mugs, and pitchers.

*Yes, Eastridge School had a tv. For all NASA space launches the students would gather in the library to sit on the floor and watch. Some other day I will share my favorite memories of early educational television

World Domination, Parker Brothers, and Milton Bradley

Way back when we lived in Edmond, Oklahoma, I used to watch a 6:30 p.m. tv show with Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson drawing on dry-erase boards with celebrity teammates. It was on during that calm half hour after the kiddies were fed, their daddy came home, and mommy was briefly off-duty but completely brain dead. The tv game wasn't Pictionary, but something similar. Not as annoying as Hollywood Squares, though.

A dear, demented friend and I have been brain-storming a team parlor game about redrawing the political map of the world. You know, redraw the Kurds into Turkey, or add the Turkish Kurds and the Iraqi Kurds to create an independent Kurdish nation. Make the Kurds try it out for a year, which could be a spinoff reality show. Circle gets Red Square. And for Eastern Europe, nobody gets to buy a vowel! I am dieting so I will look good in those Vanna White outfits.

Please tell me you have read Jumanji, by Chris Van Allsburg. We often design board games in my art classes. We make card games, too.

My favorite part of playing Risk as a kid (who was finally old enough to play with the big kids) was grooving on all the tiny colored wooden blocks for the armies. I loved how the colored blocks fit in their little plastic boxes. World domination was secondary.

I really loved playing Clue. I first played it at a friend's house in fifth grade. When I got home I recreated the game board on corrugated cardboard from an old box, and drew all the cards from memory. The game fit so well with my obsession with drawing floor plans for houses on graph paper, and my Nancy Drew/Cherry Ames book favorites. It was Professor Plum in the billiard room with the candlestick...

The students at my Montessori school sometimes play the old-fashioned game of Life. You remember the little cars with the pink and blue pegs for people. At the school the kids are allowed to choose same-sex marriages if they just want pink pegs or blue pegs. It's very open-minded.

We used to play Monopoly on school snow days. Texans don't understand the incredible snow glare headaches we used to get when the sun would come out after the blizzard. Texas winters are so gray and wimpy. Thinking about Monopoly gives me a snow headache sometimes.

Yahtzee isn't a board game, but we always played it during Christmas vacations. We might have 8 or 10 family members and friends around the dining table laughing, telling family stories, and rolling the dice until midnight, then eating sugar cookies. Howie and I prefer our sugar cookies very thin and dark brown.

Playing Scrabble is how we honor my mom. She enjoys it, and my dad won't play. I love when 3 or 4 generations are playing Scrabble. We set the board on a lazy susan. It's fun to look back through the scoring notepad to see who was old enough to add the scores in a particular year. Again, I have this thing about the little wooden tiles.


And, dang, if real life isn't a whole lot like Chutes and Ladders.