Saying good-bye to an old friend

Right up until the second I became a mother-in-law last fall, I considered myself a non-weeper. Since that sunny Colorado I-Do moment, I've turned into a sentimental old lady. Beyond turning into my mother, I've turned into my grandma.

I see Halma clearly, standing on her little kitchen porch beside the white lattice covered in orange trumpet vine flowers. Although backed by the vivid blue summer sky, Grandma is in Kodak black and white. My memories come through my Brownie Starmite view-finder. Halma is crying and waving while wiping her tears with her apron as we pull out of her yard in our pea green '54 Chevy. I wonder how my dad stayed dry-eyed at those departures.

Just guessing we stay casual until the realization creeps in that this could be the final leave-taking. Or maybe not this one, or the next one, but middle age proves there will one day be a last.

This week I got misty just spying a trumpet vine blooming on a fence. Last week I cried half-way to York after leaving my father. He can't wave from the front step anymore, and each leave-taking is closer to the last.

Today my sons and I say our good-byes to Wally, our old family friend. This reptilian character of paper and cloth over a coat hanger framework has been part of our home and family for thirteen years, hanging above the condo stairway ever since he crawled out of the storm sewer.



Wally attended many Lunch Bunch gatherings. He made special appearances at the library and schools. Wally even attended a summer camp, earning an honorarium for his guest appearance.

Wally suffered along with my youngest son through my early opera fascination, listening to "Carmen" and "Don Giovanni" until he considered biting the leg of his creator. Wally wore Santa hats and clutched roses in his teeth. He lost several teeth over the years.



Nothing made Wally as happy as shocking a repairman arriving [finally!] to fix the a/c or disposal. The later the arrival, the scarier face Wally wore.

We knew the truth. Wally had a heart of gold. Unfortunately, he accumulated a body full of spiders and spider eggs. My sons each granted permission for Wally to leave, heading toward the dumpster. I'm teary while taking a last few photos of our friend crawling out the door.




© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Shred or Savor?

This op-ed by a gifted high school student ran alongside my piece today. In a different section of the Dallas Morning News I found this great story on art sculpted by a local artist using the same old documents I rant about shredding.

My year as a volunteer columnist is ending. Applicants for Community Voices have until October fifth to submit a writing sample.

When I was selected to be a Community Voice I worried that I didn't have enough opinions about my city, and that I couldn't be a persuasive writer. During the year I've gradually realized that community is not necessarily geographic. My community is defined by the responsibilities of my generation. I connected to the most readers when I wrote about experiences with my elderly father.

Some communities don't belong under my byline even when they offer great material. It was tricky writing columns related to my job. I never ventured to write about the wacko world of my condo complex.

My columns didn't generate heated online comments, but my involvement with the newspaper made me aware of the hateful things people write when they can post anonymously. Thoughtful discourse and respectful arguments have disappeared from public media.

It's a sad situation when an inappropriate outburst during a presidential address encourages campaign contributions to the speaker. So far, no one is sending my dad monetary contributions for his inappropriate outbursts to the assisted living staff and residents. This man who was once the epitome of patience, manners, consideration, respect, and duty, has lost the function of something in his frontal lobe that filters and civilizes his behavior at age eighty-six.

Where is the hope for our nation when elected federal representatives, local officials, school administrators, rabid media commentators, and overwrought parents all behave like a cranky octogenarian in Depends?
We each have an inner editor. Let's push the reset button and reboot that program. Thanks so much, Michael Landauer.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Chewed paper for worms

Worms, I read in various on-line vermi-chats and vermi-blogs, like dryer lint. This is splendid news, as I've always wanted something to do with dryer lint after comparing and contrasting the color and quantity from laundry load to laundry load.

It must be a family fascination. My dad pours his hot breakfast bacon or sausage grease from the frypan into a glass jar each day to ponder the strata variations as if they were in agate or onyx.

So, from now on my dryer lint is going in the worm bin. True, I worry about my moist little redworms slithering into a furry collection. Does the lint fuzz stick to them, and make them look like little feather boas?

Dryer lint is very flammable, my cub scout son once explained. If you are rubbing two sticks together, it is good to have some dryer lint to catch the sparks. You can also give your lint to the birds for nesting material, but not for new outfits.

Penguin chicks look like they are covered in fuzzy, gray lint. When I was in my papier-mâché penguin phase, I tried covering chicks with dryer lint. It was a total disaster. The lint turned too quickly to goo, and slid right off the penguin forms. Maybe it slides right off the redworms, too.

"Papier-mâché means 'chewed paper'," we introduce the 3-D art project. Little art students gasp, fearing the next instruction. It's a moment easily-amused art teachers savor:

papier-mache
1753, from Fr. papier-mâché, lit. "chewed paper," from O.Fr. papier "paper" + mâché "compressed, mashed," from pp. of mâcher, lit. "to chew," from L.L. masticare "masticate."

A material, made from paper pulp or shreds of paper mixed with glue or paste, that can be molded into various shapes when wet and becomes hard and suitable for painting and varnishing when dry.

You'd think a papier-mache artist would realize that getting a large amount of shredded newpaper soaking wet, then squeezing it out to the moisture level of a well-wrung sponge would create a pulp too dense for a redworm habitat. Alas for one pound of worms, no.

My second worm bin was made with a bedding of torn cardboard t.p. and paper towel tubes, a bit of corrugated box cardboard, and several broken-up gray cardboard egg cartons. Even when these materials have the moisture level of that "well-wrung sponge," they retain enough shape to form air-pockets in the compost. So far, it seems to be working great. The worms have enough breathing room in the compost to stage runway fashion shows. Dryer lint is what the trend savvy worms will be wearing this spring!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Live Strong Lance Lips

Take off that plastic bracelet, and let it speak to you! Or let it emote for you.

We received a bunch of frog green Live Strong-style bracelets. Since I'm a great Muppets fan, and not particularly mature, the bracelets looked just like frog lips. Papier mache frog princes were already on the lesson plan. I hope they turn out more expressive than Prince Charles!

Up, up, and away, way out there

Extra! Extra! Read all about it.

Wagnerian divas escape Santa Fe Opera for three-hour tour in Albuquerque hot air balloons. We are having a fabulous time creating stories and art about improbable vacations and expeditions. Today we finished our Viking hot air balloons.

If you've ever had the great good fortune to watch the 1965 movie, "Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines," you are well aware of the dangers inherent in wearing a pointy helmet for hot air ballooning. If you were absent the day that fabulous treat was passed out, why, my heavens, you must do that make-up work immediately!



If you've ever owned a 1963 Pontiac Catalina, you know a bit about vacations going awry! Ours was a white 4-door Catalina with a light-blue interior. Amongst "The Pontiac's" travel-oddities were losing its cool in Colorado (Ft. Morgan), and losing its chrome on I-80 (which makes a very bizarre whistling sound) near Grand Island. It got totally slimed and encrusted on a mud detour through Beaver Crossing, Nebraska, back when we were still building the Eisenhower Interstate System. "The Pontiac's" greatest claim to fame was the failure of its transmission during a drive down Pike's Peak.

"The Pontiac" never transported Brunhilde or the Rhine Maidens to a mass ascension at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. Still, you can imagine the fun. I hear them singing! Or maybe that's my Heavy Classix cd playing in the art classroom.



Looks like she could hold her own with Ginger and Mary Ann! Why isn't there an opera version of Gillligan's Island?! We'll always have the Fifth Dimension! Up, up, and away!

Jag of the Junkle

The kids finished the "junk jaguar" today, painting the face and spots on the papier mache collaborative effort. It is a magnificent beast, and will be prowling the school for many months. That makes up for the disappointment of sending the masks home tomorrow.


I wouldn't want to meet this cat in a dark alley!

We all learned that the spots of a jaguar are clustered in a pattern called, "rosettes". The students had different ways of painting spots on their parts of the jaguar, which makes it more fun.

The elementary students, kindergarten to grade three, put several layers of newspaper papier mache on the structure built of recyclables last week. The final tawny coat is torn paper scraps of yellow, tan, and orange. The paper is saved receipts, maps, magazine pages, patterns, gift wrap, junk mail, envelopes, old finger paintings, and even some Egyptian hieroglyphics.

My hope is that the students now have a personal connection to this Amazon creature because of their artwork. May that connection encourage their curious self-motivated research, and their concern about the rain forest.

Eat More Chicken

Those Chick-fil-A cows have the right idea. I specifically need my friends and students' parents to eat more of the deli rotisserie chickens from their favorite grocery store. See Example A.


Example A

See that black plastic pan holding the golden brown chicken under the clear plastic dome? We just used a bunch of them to begin the forms for papier mache jaguar masks, and they were perfect. We used a lot of Altoid gum boxes for mouths, and many other items for eyes, ears, and noses, but the chicken pans were the key to success.

Beyond Banana Bread

On the phone with Dad, discussing food, of course, and I wander out to the kitchen thinking I would stare into the cold refrigerator for a minute and a dinner inspiration would pop to mind. Whoa! What happened to those bananas on the kitchen counter? They looked fine this morning, but now they are so dark and fragile I can barely lift them into the waste basket. They have oozed and stained the counter.

Dad is considering whether to go out for cooked veggies or fresh. Wendy's? Boston Market? I tell him the bananas have got to go.

"What about banana bread?," he asks.

"These babies are beyond banana bread," I explain. We agree that Beyond Banana Bread sounds like a bad summer sequel movie or remake, maybe starring Mel Gibson. We get the giggles, especially when we decide we must each go forward toward our supper destiny with a cry of, "To banana bread and beyond!"

Although we've hung up, I still have the giggles. I see Mad Max himself, Mel Gibson, wearing a Fruit of the Loom classic tv costume for the grape guy. I try to say "beyond banana bread" aloud, but my tongue is tangled in Toy Story-speak with Buzz Lightyear, and it comes out like "Binaca Breath Spray". These bananas definitely belong to the post-apocalyptic science fiction movie genre.

Good grief! Back in the early 1970s when we were wearing gaucho pants, battle jackets, and hot pants all made of polyester double-knit, high school was the land of Binaca. We were all hurrying to our lockers in the halls of high school learning spraying wintergreen breath freshener on our tongues. Life was primitive in those Olden Days Before Backpacks. Bianca had just married Mick Jagger.

Told my youngest that my class was making a life-size papier mache jaguar, and I was still working out the design bugs in my junk-collecting mind's eye. "Just go on-line and get a schematic," he suggested. Oops. The diagrams are for Jaguar cars. My class is making an animal.

Same son went to see the remake of "Bad News Bears" last evening. What was he thinking!? He said it was an awful kiddie movie with cussing. Walter Matthau clones dressed in banana costumes do a Kilgore Rangerette dance routine just off camera in my brain.

Kick-step-kick-turn.

More rotten than the bananas, George W. makes newsreels of "Beyond Arrogance". Twenty-one U.S. soldiers were killed in Bush's post-apocalyptic science fiction Iraq in the past three days while the President touted teaching intelligent design in public schools and disbelieved Rafael Palmeiro's positive steroid test.

On a local level, my son is making a smoothie fruit shake. He fills the blender one-third full of ice cubes, then adds frozen peach slices and frozen berries. He peels a banana, and adds it with a bit of cran-grape juice, some fresh strawberries, and a peeled orange. Turns on the blender, and it freezes up. Put the banana in first! Always put the soft stuff into the blender before the frozen stuff!

Dream Team

I have the joy of teaching a delightful, polite, enthusiastic, smart group of eight and nine year-olds right now, many of whom I've known since they were three or four years-old. All I have to do is hang an idea out there on the wind, and they are running with it. I made a few suggestions about how to make their drawings successful, and every child applied at least one suggestion. When they had questions about the rain forest animals and how to draw them, they looked up the information or images in my library books with a little help.

We started building the form for the almost life-size jaguar that we are going to papier mache. They were so pumped! I would not be surprised if they arrive tomorrow with all sorts of solutions to the problem of the big cat's ears. One of them might even research whether owls live in the rainforest. I need to check on that myself.

This is the class of my dreams!

Dumping the Shark

The Art Teacher Wore White: Clearly a Mystery

Why would a practical, sensible, Type A fifty year-old art teacher who scored a 39 on Dr. Phil's alleged personality test wear an all-white outfit? Why would she worry the whole day about resembling an albino manatee? Why would she think this was a good day to take Larry the Shark to the dumpster?

And just who was this Larry fellow?



It is easier to boost a sawed-up couch into a dumpster than it is to chuck a nearly toothless one year-old papier mache shark.

Credit card frogs

I was awakened by an automated phone call from a "Credit Card Fraud Early Warning System". The first thing it asked me for was my social security number, so I hung up. Thought it might be some sort of scam to get that information. So I called the 800# on the back of my card, said "help" instead of going through the menu, and got a real live human. Explained my concern, and she put me through to the Fraud Department. I explained my question to the Fraud Department lady, only I couldn't manage to say "fraud" because I hadn't had any coffee yet. It kept coming out "frog". She said she would prefer to be working in the Credit Card Frog Department this Monday morning. Anyway, she verified that I had indeed made three transactions with my card yesterday, none of which were major purchases. It was rather reassuring to me that there is an early warning system for frogs, and that it is triggered with only these very small transactions, and not a million dollars in luxury items run up by a real frog scheme.

The whole concept of frogs with credit cards is frightening, and should be addressed at the highest levels of government. Can you just imagine if they all go to the shopping center when the mall walkers are out exercising? Who will scrape that mess off my shoes?

Larry the Shark

Got to read one of my favorite picture books to the kids today. It's called Punia and the King of Sharks: A Hawaiian Folktale. Elementary kids love it! Kids are fascinated by sharks in the same way they are fascinated by Egyptian mummies and the Titanic. I once read a Bailey White interview or story about inspiring kids to read by setting a shelf of books about the Titanic in the first grade classroom. The kids were desperate to become better readers so they could find out more about the Titanic. What a powerful example of self-motivation.This is the beginning form for our giant shark. We will start the papier mache tomorrow, but today we had to work out the form. The shark is about six feet long. We began with a cardboard tube from inside upholstery fabric, crossed by a shorter, wider tube from a roll of butcher paper. We added a huge bottle from an Ozarka dispenser, but I don't really recommend that. I was hoping for a trash bag full of small Ozarka water bottles, but the donor's roommate mistook it for garbage! Imagine that. We did use about three dozen small bottles to add bulk without much weight. We also used Styrofoam egg cartons, meat trays, and mushroom containers, foil pie pans, coat hangers, and four rolls of clear packing tape.



We looked at photos of sharks, and did some careful analysis of shapes. I presented the seven and eight year-olds with a Trojan Horse scenario: You have made an emergency landing on an island inhabited by two tribes that have been at war for a long time. You realize you could help the tribe that has befriended you if you could show them how to make a mock giant shark. You do not speak their language, but you have all the different things that wash up on the island available to use to make the shark. This led to some really imaginative diagramatic drawings. Several kids drew cross-sections to show the oarsmen sitting on benches inside the fake shark. Others drew cut-aways to a high tech control room. Two kids drew instructions for chopping down palm trees. One drew specifications for sharp carving tools to shape the shark eyes. The best drawing involved a system of pulleys to lift the fake shark up into a tree during construction, and provided a security force of soldiers with bows and arrows. One student elaborated on the scenario to have the fake shark appear to leap from the water while being controlled from a small submarine. Some drew their shark being made from all the recyclables, and some showed the various equipment needed. One shark appeared to be grinning at the thought of eating a pair of scissors. That led to a fun discussion of the weird things really found in the stomachs of sharks, like a full suit of armor!With the five and six year-olds, we worked more on figuring out how to draw a shark using lots of triangles. We also folded pieces of paper into triangles for shark teeth the way an honor guard folds an American flag. It was hard work, but a shark has rows and rows of teeth, so we were up to the task. We will keep the shark around the school for a long time. It will be fun when kids come back and show their friends our group creation. They will say, "I helped when we made the giant shark," in the way old-timers said, "I was there when they drove the Golden Spike!"


In this photo our shark is nearly finished. Some students want to name it Bruce, while others prefer Larry. We have used gray tissue paper to make the finish, rather than painting the surface. The students have united through their ownership of the shark.

Cue up the Hawaii Five-O theme song!

This is the day I've been looking forward to all summer. This is the day we started our giant papier mache shark. I love doing group art projects in my classes. It is a trip!



This is the beginning form for the shark. For more information, click on the link to Itty Bitty Art Projects over there in the sidebar.

I love teaching figure drawing using photos of surfers. I am not a surfer. I'm not a traveler. I've only been to Galveston, Corpus Christi, and South Padre, and then not until I was in my late-thirties. I can teach kids to analyze and draw figures using my collection of photos torn from the wide array of surfing magazines available in Dallas, Texas, though. So I am looking forward to seeing the new surfing documentary, Riding Giants, this weekend.

Is it just a bad dream, or did Lucy and Ethel once sing a song about a surfboard that came back by itself????

Are you ready to bungle?

In the jungle??? Our first summer camp starts next week with a jungle theme.

I've been asked to display some student art in a financial services office. I spent part of the afternoon doing name labels for the giant papier mache frogs and butterflies for the exhibit. Loaded everything in my car since I'm setting up the display early tomorrow morning. When I went into Mardel's Christian Bookstore to laminate some information about the frogs for the show, I was magnetically drawn to a display of Vacation Bible School supplies. There were stacks of what appeared to be do-it-yourself coconut bra halves!

There's is nothing like a dame, nothing in the world. There is nothing you can name that is anything like a dame!

Anyway, the coconuts turned out to be halves that fit together like a plastic Easter egg, only much bigger. Can't you see it? The monkeys steal the explorers' map, and hide it in the secret coconut?? So I got two coconuts at $1.49 each. We can always make them into bras after camp ends.

Then, because I was really dreading going to the grocery store AGAIN, I turned into Half-Price Books. There were these fabulous plush elephant hobby-horses on clearance for $3 each. True, they used to sing with lip sync motion when you squeezed the ear, but that was easily surgically altered. I only got two, but I could go back. The store had 3-4 more. Imagine the drama possibilities for the jungle and Magic Carpet camps. Think of the fabulous entrance to the palace that Aladdin could make riding on an elephant. I can almost hear Robin Williams singing! No wait, I can hear Robin Williams singing because I am cuing the video to show the kids at the second camp.

So, here is the visual: I am driving around Plano, Texas, with "Carmen" blaring on my new cd player (that Mike installed. He's a good boy.). The Buick's backseat is packed with seven giant frogs on their lily pads, the big stepladder, and two singing elephants. In the front I've got two giant butterflies with two and a half foot wingspans. In the trunk I've got the wheely cart and six bags of groceries. I do wish I had been wearing face paint and bug antennas.

I bought Jeff a Longhorn burnt-orange baseball cap embroidered, "Keep Austin Weird". I do my best to make Plano weirder, too. My kids often depart with the phrase, "Keep it real, Mom." But why????

Cool Frogs

I sure hope you saw “The Triplets of Belleville”! That is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I’ve only seen it once so far. There were some very cool frogsicles, and other frog delicacies in it. But today, boys and squirrels, I’m not talking cinema. I’m talking papier mache with kindergarten and first grade students.

We have been working on our giant frogs for several weeks. Used cantaloupe-size balloons, plastic Easter egg halves, and corrugated box cardboard to start our frogs and lily pads. We slimed them with newspaper and Ross Art Paste while discussing the hoarding of toenail clippings (papier mache projects bring out the most primitive in all kids).

Added “fun foam” legs and eyes today. Each frog gained personality plus! Then we brewed up paints in every green imaginable:

Lime
Swamp
Slime
Poison
Army
Oobleck
Severe weather radar
Tornado sky
Blond swimmer chlorine hair
Spinach
Jade
Broccoli
Christmas
Mowed grass
Cactus
Seaweed
Lettuce
Mallard duck
Sage
Guacamole
Tropical island
Picnic table
Out-dated cottage cheese
Tree moss
New leaves
Parrot
Hansel & Gretel forest
Skunky aquarium
Jello
Mustard
Leak under the car
Robin Hood
Tinkerbell
UFO

Hope you haven’t had a green OD. If you did, just put the lime in the coconut…

Ozone Alert

Poor air quality is predicted for the next few days. In fact, we are at level purple in the DFW area; dangerous for all people and poodles. When I go out to get the newspaper at 5:45 a.m., I expect to see a purple haze hovering over the parking lot. Purple haze. All in my brain. Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters! My lyrics are starting to braid. It's quite a double helix.

Today we did fabric mache on top of the papier mache camel. We're trying to get the camel texture with frayed and thread-bare terry towels and offensive double knits from the Bridge Club Ladies' Polyester Amnesty Program. If it turns out weird when we paint the camel, we'll give it a splendid saddle blanket. Fabric mache makes the project stronger, but I have never used it as the final layer before. This is the most inspiring papier mache book I've ever found:

The Simple Screamer: A Guide to the Art of Papier and Cloth Mache, by Dan Reeder.

We've had fun reading these stories about camels:

What's the Matter, Habibi?, by Betsy Lewin.

The Camel Who Took a Walk, by Jack Tworkov.

How the Camel Got His Hump, by Rudyard Kipling.

Then, of course, there's the seven hump Wump in One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, by my hero, Dr. Seuss.

Voodoo-zoodoo! I'm getting an inspiration for an art project with camels brushing their teeth, [and it's about time!], like the kitchen kangaroo project.

Building a better camel

Ah, but it feels good to be in the final camp of the summer. The theme? "Magic Carpet Ride". Not the Steppenwolf song, but the Arabian Nights with poofy pants, magic lamps, and strong-willed floor-coverings. Okay, I admit I would jump on a Harley chopper with Peter Fonda if it wasn't too hot outside, but this is a different fantasy. Imagine a hooded cobra saying, "Charmed, I'm sure," in Alec Guiness' voice during polite introductions. "Swish and slither," according to the girls. "Suck-all-your-blood reptile convention", add the boys.

The preschoolers think the camel armature is a "Campbell", so we may have to name our desert creation, "Soup". Henry, age four, says the camel is not real because, "it is made of materials". Recycled materials, I might add. My favorites are the plastic jugs that held the sourdough pretzels from Office Depot. It is always good to know you are contributing to an artistic masterpiece and an environmental nirvana when you are compulsively chomping on pretzels. Oscars for Best Supporting Junk in a Documentary go to poster mailing tubes, wire coat hangers, egg cartons, plastic Easter eggs, Sara Lee foil pie pans, and sponge packing materials (from Raytheon, our corporate recycling genie). Held together with several rolls of clear packing tape, the camel/Campbell is now ready to papier mache. Of course, the empty rolls from the packing tape will be transformed into the golden bracelets of Wali Dad:

The Gifts of Wali Dad: A Tale of India and Pakistanby Aaron Shepard, Daniel San Souci (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Edition: School & Library Binding

It is good to rub the lamp and free some magic on a day when it is 108 degrees. It is good to imagine being Wali Dad, the grass-cutter in his small hut. Help us all find moments of self-sufficiency, simplicity, clarity, and contentment.

Spit curls

Two first-graders styled their hair with papier mache goopy-goo (Ross Art Paste) today. The effect was quite dramatic. Ross Art Paste is non-toxic, cheap, and long-lasting. Perhaps if the word got out, we could bring down the megabucks hair products industry. Goopy-goo doesn't say much on the box about it's actual contents. I've always figured it was made from pulverized yak toenails, so I tell kids it's just like Jello without the color. Most of them don't eat it. They prefer using gluesticks for lipstick.

Remember that white paste that came in gigantic jars? I have a precise visual memory of the Sunday School room where I first tasted that heavenly delight. It must have been a three-year-old's cosmic experience. I can still see the dark wood tables and scary, shadowy brown brick fireplace on that gray, rainy morning. Some folks find the Virgin Mary in a poorly installed double-pane window. I tasted direct evidence of God's bountiful goodness that day.

Found an old letter from Mary from back when her kids were toddlers. She said their uneaten breakfast Pillsbury cinnamon rolls smelled just like Play-Doh. As a person who still loves to wham the cardboard tube on the edge of the counter, this has been a troubling concept for two decades.

Coming soon: The lion and the lamb. One three-year old brings her Fisher Price sheep to camp tucked in her undies. Last camp a kid kept a quarter in his Under-Roos, but had to constantly verify that his funds were safe. Never underestimate the importance of a full-service bank that gives you peace of mind.

How can you have any pudding?

Gruel is such an odd word. Like suet and porridge, it seems to come from an ancient dwarf language...

It was a grueling day in Art Land. We started our papier mache crocodiles. G'day mates! Are you thinking Dundee or Hunter? Used washed-out plastic water bottles, scavenged from soccer teams, for the body. Added a french fry box for the head. You know, the cardboard sleeves for McD apple pies, etc.? And no, for once they aren't recycled! Then cut a triangular section from a 2-litre pop bottle for the tail. Now time for the legs. That's when we put the Bridge Club Ladies' empty Rx bottles to use. At four bottles per student times 28 students, we use a lot of cholestrol, blood pressure, thyroid, and hormone replacement bottles! Thank heaven those Ladies take lots of drugs! Now for the eyes made of tiny plastic Easter egg halves. Since one half is round, and the other is oval, the croc seems to be winking.

Do you know that Cub Scout pack meeting sing-along standard, "The Lady and the Crocodile"? Goes about like this:

She sailed away on a sunny summer day on the back of a crocodile.
"You see", said she, "He's as tame as tame can be. I'll ride him down the Nile."
The croc winked his eye as she bade them all goodbye wearing a happy smile.
At the end of the Nile the lady was inside, and the smile was on the crocodile.

Always comes to mind when someone is in denial. Not good, but better than being in decrocodile.

Some other day: Gender differences in elementary student behavior during initial exposure to papier mache paste: A Master's Thesis? Was it good for you, too?... Teacher! Teacher! Can I wash my hands? May I wash my hands? Well, I suppose that would probably be better than licking it off!... Also for PE credit, a beginner's guide to floor slime skiing.