Teaching art with itty bitty students, exploring creativity, finding new passions and purpose, and enjoying the progress of my three greatest works of art out there in the big world.
Showing posts with label frozen novelties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label frozen novelties. Show all posts
I have often walked down this street before; But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before. All at once am I several stories high...
Picked up my new spectacles today, and the pavement is only a fraction of an inch above my feet. Poor Freddy Eynsford-Hill needed a better optometrist.
Tonight I can say it's easier reading with the new glasses. Drove with no problems. Now I've messed around at the computer editing photos and making lesson plans for a few hours, and haven't set my glasses aside yet. The ultimate test will be shelving top-shelf fiction at the library.
Kind of sad that my Dairy Queen frames will be put out to pasture. I've had those glasses since 2005. That's when a co-worker first noticed their resemblance to the DQ logo.
Dairy Queen no more. Long live the queen. Bring her a chocolate Dilly Bar ASAP.
So, that is the first and last time I watch Rachel Ray make Moroccan mini meatballs while I iron. The fresh mint and garlic and lamb and zucchini and tumeric and coriander just sounded so rich I had to go spend fifty bucks at Kroger, but I had to substitute ground beef for the lamb.
The mini Moroccan meatballs played billiards in my gut all night. My stomach muscles are in the corner pocket. Little sleep to start the school week.
I got to Dad's room about 3:50. He was watching Judge Joe Brown at high volume and talking very softly. He was back on oxygen with a different machine now from hospice. He was all cattywhoochee in the bed with his feet hanging off, so I went to find his aide to help me pull him back into the center.
Realigned, Dad told me he'd "been selected", that he was "perfect to be interviewed". Then he kept saying, "I think we can go anytime," but also asked me to get him some coveralls. I said he didn't need coveralls, so he asked for a shirt and slacks. He wanted me to pull up with the big red car so we could go to the Home Office. Amen.
Dad's nurse says he is now on two antibiotics, oxygen, and breathing treatments. His doctor saw him on Friday and ordered another chest xray. She saw him again today, according to the hospice social worker. I always seem to be two days behind with information about xrays or meds. I suppose it's the lag between the xray and the results, combined with the weekend staff change.
The nurse said that after the breathing treatment she was suctioning Dad's throat trying to get out a "big glob". Dad didn't want her to get it out. She said he would be able to breathe better. He said he didn't want to breathe better.
In the middle of all this the little old lady who always asks if I have seen Neil started ranting because the bus wasn't there yet. She thinks the nurses station is a bus depot. There is a certain similarity with all the people speaking in tongues, but the floor is less sticky and I'm not so scared to go in the restrooms.
I went back to Dad's room. He was watching Judge Judy and saying how much he liked Judge Judy and Judge Roy Bean and Nancy Grace "even though she is always wrong." Then I got a call from the hospice social worker whose name is, drumroll please:
Eden. I kid you not.
Eden was concerned because we do not have a Texas Out of Hospital Do Not Resuscitate form on file, but now we do. Also, The Five Wishes, Dad's advanced care preference document is not recognized in Texas. Eden says it should be because it is the most detailed directive available.
Eden told me the hospice chaplain had visited Dad today about the same time as his doctor. Maybe the chaplain visit turned into being "selected for an interview". Dad wanted to tell his aide about his "selection" after supper.
I asked Dad if he saw the doctor today. "No time," he said. "I got on the train very early to come to Plano." At some point he also told me he "drove to Schuyler and Plainview". Maybe the sound of the oxygen machine makes him think he's on some mode of transportation.
Dad's supper was the ugliest meal I've seen since we brought him to Plano. Boiled purple cabbage, green peas, gooey bread, red juice (thickened), a scoop of ground ham with yellow gravy on top, vanilla ice cream, and a frosted chocolate brownie. This makes up for the meal with minestrone that looked almost good enough for me to request.
When I tried to feed Dad he slapped at me, so I let him struggle along. It was very sad to watch. He kept flopping over to his right, so he could hardly suck the juice through the straw. I kept propping him up.
I had a little chat with Fritzi and told her I'd done the very best I could for Howie. I just pray that he will get on the bus, Gus, with or without coveralls.
The children are playing restaurant in the kitchen, asking all the adults for their orders. We have revamped the play kitchen so all the pretend food is soft fabric. I love having this center just a tad more quiet at the end of a long day.
A small herd of waitstaff encircles and enquires what I would like. An idea pops out of my mouth before it hits my brain--a bacon, lettuce, tomato sandwich on toasted whole wheat with a root beer float. How good that would taste.
The five year-olds don't seem to know the joy of an A&W root beer float. They want to know how to make a "fruit bear boat".
"What do I owe you?," I ask the kindergarten cashier. "Fifty," he says, and then hands me a promotional Your Name Here credit card. "This is good for your next eleven thousand eighty," he says like a proud start-up entrepreneur.
"Thanks," I say. It's a good deal. Unlimited free fruit bear boats for pretty much the rest of my life.
I'll be wearing a classy Dove Dark Chocolate with Vanilla Ice Cream Bar to my son's wedding. Or maybe I'll look more like a DQ dip cone. Either way I'm thrilled that I have my mother-of-the-groom (MOG) outfit.
Thanks to all my underpaid wedding attire consultant friends for your patient guidance and fashion brainstorming. An outdoor wedding in a mountain town in mid-October with four mothers for the bridal couple present some interesting challenges.
I plan to savor every moment!
Irresistibly rich, ice cream smothered in decadently delicious DOVE® Chocolate — you’ll savor every moment.
My Ohio roadtrip highlights reel includes a child jumping out of a car wearing her softball uniform. She was hurrying into Pickerington, Ohio's own Planet Coffee with her dad. I was stunned by her fabulous candy cane/barber pole knee socks. I was so envious!
Neither the Cincinnati Reds nor the Chicago Cubs had such awesome socks. I loved watching boats and barges on the river beyond the stadium as our game went into extra innings.
Planet Coffee has another claim to fame. A statue of General William Tecumseh Sherman stands near the coffee shop patio in this strip mall. Sherman is missing his head. The statue is nonequestrian. Why is it there?
I've got to give Ohio credit. It sure provokes a lot of Googling for trivia answers. Turns out the real General Sherman was born not far from Pickerington in Lancaster, Ohio. Maybe coffee shops in Lincoln, Nebraska should have headless statues of General John J. Pershing or perennial presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan.
Back home in North Texas we've had odd rainbow sherbet skies in the evenings. Three dips--lemon, orange, and lime, but no waffle cones. It takes many days to reset myself after a roadtrip. The questions raised on a good trip keep me searching for many stay-at-home months.
During a recent flight I read Betty Webb's zookeeper murder mystery, Anteater of Death. Good title, plus I learned that anteaters have blue tongues and are partial to bananas. Also, I remembered why I quit reading mysteries. Nice as it was to have a zookeeper heroine instead of a private detective, bounty hunter, or overweight police officer from a wealthy/dysfunctional family, the book still could have been outlined by any four third-grade girls using only an origami "fortune-teller".
If you have forgotten how to fold a fortune-teller, Enchanted Learning has clear instructions. The same week it came to my attention that most of the kindergarten students don't know about antlers. They seem to think an "antler" is a big pile of ants, and that reindeer have "cantaloupes" on their heads. Plus, they think blue tongues are caused by Otter Pops and cupcake frosting. At least that part is true.
The Woolly Mammoth and I spent a Sunday morning at the Petroglyph National Monument. This was my third or fourth visit to the park over fifteen years, and I was dismayed to find civilization encroaching like a bad case of cockroaches. Everywhere we looked from the top of the mesa, new homes were just a shoe's throw away.
To add a particularly unsettling soundtrack to our hike, a popsicle truck was driving up and down the residential streets. The song clearly drifting up to us was the tune that begins Firesign Theatre's "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus".
Yes, this is the Sunday morning popsicle truck in question. Who buys popsicles before noon? My son, the Woolly Mammoth, would have bought a popsicle if he had the money. Instead, he eats several Otter Pops per day.
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.
I'll be wearing a classy Dove Dark Chocolate with Vanilla Ice Cream Bar to my son's wedding. Or maybe I'll look more like a DQ dip cone. Either way I'm thrilled that I have my mother-of-the-groom (MOG) outfit.
