Universal reptile insomnia

Image from eHow 

Waking up at two a.m. to ponder the freshness of your supper salmon based on particular intestinal clues is not so good. It lets the mind wander too much among the recent past and future what-ifs. If you have recently spotted a large snake on your patio you might have way too much information and way too little home maintenance. That is, if you've learned that said Texas Rat Snake can climb walls, you may be nudged by a vague unease about the flap on the dryer vent up there under the eaves.

And if, what if... the snake is not in the dryer vent, but the mice are living large in there, then what???

Reference points for anxious wee a.m hours pondering:

1. Childhood buddy's gerbil escaped while I was at her house for a sleepover.  Gerbil was finally found in their clothes dryer the worse for the adventure.
2. Discovering a nest of snakes in the fuzzy, linty dirt below the dryer vent at the house when my sons were small and the dryer ran 24/7 all winter.  Baby snakes slithering under the front door or into the delivered newspaper.
3. Finding my dryer vent duct tubing impacted with lint.
4. Years of reading Ellen Stoll Walsh's Mouse Count to children...  "Little, warm, and tasty, fast asleep."

This is not a home maintenance project to tackle at two a.m. After work I rushed to Home Depot. There I found a "universal" Deflect-O dryer vent bird guard. Back home I got the memo that  "universal" usually means the product fits every situation except MINE!

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Michiko Kakutani's New York Times 3/20/12 review of John Gertner's book, The Idea Factory : Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, crossed my table last Saturday.  Would I actually read the book?  No, although it is "utterly comprehensible--indeed thrilling--to the lay reader".  Trouble is that I keep falling asleep in the limited hours available outside of work.  The review is a delightful, brief explanation of Bell Labs and the visionary leadership that promoted a culture of highest level creativity, innovation, and cross-disciplinary scientific research.  This paragraph caught my attention because of interest in early childhood education and nature awareness, crisscrossed with memories of my father.  Dad had the small town background of those Bell Lab scientists:

Many Bell Labs scientists, including Brattain, Kelly and the Nobel Prize-winning physicistCharles H. Townes, who helped develop the principles of the laser, grew up on farms or in small towns, which Dr. Townes argued were the perfect “training grounds for experimental physics.” Such childhoods, he contended, taught a person how to “pay attention to the natural world, to work with machinery and to know how to solve practical problems and fix things innovatively, with what is on hand.”

Dad was a supreme practitioner of the "fix with what is on hand" mentality.  Once he had rigged a slapdash repair he was oblivious to the aesthetic realities of his idea.  That is, when the man fixed the dang shower drip by stretching a heavy-duty rubber band he didn't care that his family had the ugly, mildewed rubber band in the bathtub for the next two decades.

During a recent windstorm my gate got blown out of its lock lever. I didn't want it to keep banging and twisting off its hinges, so I grabbed the nearest coat hanger.  My fix worked, but I don't want to look at it for very long. I'm a child of a child of the Great Depression, but I'd like a prettier solution long term.

I love stories of resourcefulness, and especially stories that include a pair of pliers in the back pocket of overalls. When I read Andy and the Lion to the preschoolers I worry that they are just too far removed from washing behind their ears out on the back porch to get it.  Then I worry that children won't get to hear this story because hunting lions, even in a tall tale, is not politically correct.  Plus, I worry that kids don't even get to walk to school on their own feeling like intrepid adventurers.  

Dad had few vices, but this vise and lots of C-clamps.  I'm trying to rig a way to hang our coat hanger wire sculptures from the top edge of a cafeteria stage backdrop so they blow in the nonexistent wind.  In the middle of the night I'm pondering how to do this with no money and no knowledge of the depth of that stage back wall prior to the performance day.  And no really big rubber-bands!

Bark is on my mind for good reason.  The school music festival is based on Leo Lionni's very 1968 parable, The Alphabet Tree about "the power of the written word in a democratic society":

The wordbug teaches the letters on the alphabet tree, torn and tossed by a windstorm, how to become stronger by banding together to form words. Then a clever purple caterpillar teaches the letters to become even stronger by forming sentences with a message of peace. 

The costumes for the kiddies are even tie-dye t-shirts!  Did the dyeing on the playground this afternoon.  Stirred the dye with a shovel handle for more problem-solving with material at hand.  Groovy.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Weber mentor

Danger Baby and his lovely bride are here this weekend helping me in numerous ways.  First we worked through all the issues for Dad's estate and learned about probate in Collin County.  This will be a new adventure, and I am glad to have his legal-type thinking helping me sort it out.  Looking at the various accounts was pretty daunting on my own.

They have also been helping me with long-delayed condo maintenance tasks.  Days were not long enough, and my energy didn't go far enough for any problem in the mere annoyance category.

Perhaps most satisfying, Danger Baby is teaching me to use the Weber Q-Baby gas grill Dad won in a drawing sponsored by Miller Genuine Draft at HyVee years ago.  Dad already had a grill, so this one went into his basement and sat unused.  I brought it back to Texas in the Buick on one of my last Nebraska trips, but we had burn bans due to the drought.  Burning down the condo complex would not win me friends.  Plus, I just didn't get the whole fifty pound propane tank concept.

Now I know the Weber uses little baby 14.1 ounce propane bottles even I can lift.  Tonight I will have a lesson with the Grill Meister making honey barbecue chicken, corn, and asparagus.  I think Howie, that old charcoal perfectionist, would be pleased.  He may even be present.

And in the big rule of life category, You Must Be Present To Win.


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Moving on up

Drainage is good.

Elevation is, too.

I am thinking about homes in the Fifties and Sixties after watching the powerful movie, "Tree of Life". As a Sixties tree-climber, I loved being able to see a long way to the east from the hill in our backyard. I loved riding down the hill from our house to the swimming pool on my blue Schwinn, but not pedaling back up.





Having a house on a hill was important to my mother.  Fritzi had vivid memories of flooding on the farm where she grew up.  The farm was in the vicinity of Marion, which was never much more than a "populated place" on Little Beaver Creek between McCook, Nebraska and Oberlin, Kansas in the Republican River Basin.  According to Mom, it was a dismal spot to be a child during the drought and Great Depression.  Her stories always included kerosene lamps, mean roosters, and stinky flood waters.

My eldest, Mr. Speech-Debate, is experiencing the soggy Joys of Home Ownership in a rapid immersion program.  After buying a starter home in Salem, Oregon last fall, he is dealing with flooding in Marion County in the Willamette River Valley.  More particularly, there is flooding in the HVAC ducts of his home's crawl space.  There is little I can do for him, beyond directing cosmic blow-dryer thoughts in a northwesterly direction.

Dad also needs cosmic blow-dryer thoughts directed his way, but he's a bit better today.  He swallowed tiny bites of chocolate pudding and Gerber baby peaches, but couldn't manage mashed potatoes.  He swallowed a couple ounces of water, then said, "little bit" when I asked if he would like to try some coffee.  He moved his arm to adjust his eyeglasses, lifted the Styrofoam cup to his lips, and pointed his finger toward the photos on his bulletin board.

To bring this weekend story full circle, my youngest, the Woolly Mammoth, is moving to a new apartment in Washington, D.C.  After a year and a half in a basement apartment, he is excited to have windows and city views.  D.C. is, of course, the city of Marion Barry.  I'll be glad not to fret about basement flooding if the river of Republican presidential candidates overflows in an rush of hot air and polluted water.

Dad is awash in oral secretions that clog the back of his throat.  This problem has escalated over five years, although it is considered a symptom of the final stage of life.  We keep the head of his bed elevated to promote drainage.

And for the polarizing film "Tree of Life", there is much to admire in the sets, costumes, locations, and glorious photography.  Much, too, to consider about doing the best one can as a parent in any decade.








© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Dog + Fog = No Blog Posts

Watching t.v. with Dad, I'm creeped out by the endless commercials for Christian Mingle Dot Com.  Apparently one can "Find God's match for you" online.

I am in love, but with a five and a half pound dog, possibly a divine gift for mental health and stress relief this holiday season.  While my trip to Oregon included a wonderful visit with my son and daughter-in-law, scenic adventures in several environmental niches, and a break from both nursing home and computer, the best for my blood pressure was probably hanging out with Wiley the Wonder Dog.  Wiley has two speeds, Doggie-A-Go-Go, and snoozing on your lap.  Wiley is either a baby koala, a canine Einstein, or a Schnauzer-Yorkie mix.  He does NOT like to have his toenails trimmed.  Neither does my dad.  Medicare doesn't pay for old farts to have their nails cut very often, and those poor podiatrists probably wait years to be reimbursed for their services.

Sunday my eldest and I visited the Mt. Angel Abbey near Salem.  We went because Fodor's suggested the library was a "masterpiece of serene and thoughtful design", and one of only two American buildings by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. Maybe the interior is a masterpiece, but the exterior was less intriguing than the monks' Weber grills on its patio. Since the library was closed, I will not add it to my Life List.

The hilltop abbey was itself a gem of serenity and mindfulness.  Like Brigadoon, it seemed adrift in a sea of mist and fog, removed from real time and concerns.  I felt near Christopher Columbus' edge of the flat earth looking out into the fog beyond the pines.

The Benedictine monks thoughtfully reminded me I should winterize my condo exterior faucets when I returned home.  Please note the faucet cover at the grotto:

What makes a non-dog person in a foggy land go seeking Finnish architecture in the Willamette Valley?  There doesn't seem to be an online specific matchmaking website with or without God's misty assistance. Sometimes we must find our own way or a comfortable chair.  Why seek out an Alvar Aalto project?  Because his chair designs are found in a book I loved as a child. We all find our places of calm where we can retreat.  On a clear day we can see for miles in the valley, but this was a foggy day:

On a  clear day
Rise and look around you
And you'll see who you are.
On a clear day
How it will astound you
That the glow of your being outshines ev'ry star.

You'll feel part of ev'ry mountain sea and shore.
You can hear, from far and near,
A world you've never heard before.
And on a clear day...
On that clear day...
You can see forever and ever more!

So tonight I have Arvo Pärt's "Te Deum" in the cd player.  It fits the fog, the abbey, the aesthetic, and recent memories of a small dog snoozing on my lap. 

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

O! Crap and pooper scooping! OR, Oh, crap! And pooper scooping...

My weekend has had parentheses of fecal ephiphanies, which may qualify this post as graffiti with punctuation. I offer these revelations:


--Constipated young children tend to sit on the pot rolling toilet paper mummy-style around their hand until they need it.  This can result in serious clogging, and necessitate use of a plunger (not on the child).


--Swimming in summer lakes can lead to ER visits for viral or bacterial meningitis.  I was almost as obsessed with the discovery of brain-eating amoeba in the Sixties as I was with man-eating grizzly bears:  


Naegleria fowleri infects people by entering the body through the nose. This typically occurs when people go swimming or diving in warm freshwater places, like lakes and rivers.


--It is impossible to look elegant carrying a plastic bag of dog poop, or bending over to collect same, or trying to snap a photo of an unknown condo dog-owner and make a quick get-away.


--I forgot to write the next installment of the dog art projects as promised.


--If you are going to replace your toilet, please pay Home Depot to haul the old one away when the new one is delivered.  Nobody wants to see your old potty sitting by the dumpster waiting for a nocturnal elf to cart it away.  Nobody wants to contemplate nocturnal toilet elves.  Your condo association will end up paying for removal of the potty, and that will impact your due$.  This adds new meaning to "bulk pick-up" and "impacted bowels".


--The typical American eats twelve grams of fiber per day.  The RDA is twenty-five grams of fiber.  This is why "Americans can't poop," as I learned at a recent child care workshop presented by nutritionist Coco Frey.


--crap 

"defecate" 1846 (v.), 1898 (n.), from one of a cluster of words generally applied to things cast off or discarded (e.g. "weeds growing among corn" (early 15c.), "residue from renderings" (late 15c.), underworld slang for "money" (18c.), and in Shropshire, "dregs of beer or ale"), all probably from M.E. crappe "grain that was trodden underfoot in a barn, chaff" (mid-15c.), from M.Fr. crape"siftings," from O.Fr. crappe, from M.L. crappa, crapinum "chaff." Sense of "rubbish, nonsense" also first recorded 1898. Despite folk etymology insistence, not from Thomas Crapper (1837-1910) who was, however, a busy plumber and may have had some minor role in the development of modern toilets. The name Crapper is a northern form of Cropper (attested from 1221), an occupational surname, obviously, but the exact reference is unclear.

 --Thomas Crapper was born a couple decades before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Although he provided royal plumbing solutions, he was never knighted.



--Our Wednesday art projects were not stellar, but the students love David Shannon's book, Good Boy, Fergus!  I read it practicing to meet my new grandpuppy.*

--My students also adore the poems and illustrations in Good Dog:

In this heart-stealing picture book, fine artist Robert Rahway Zakanitch gives us 16 masterful, soulful, impossibly expressive portraits of dogs, and Maya Gottfried wonderfully captures their voices and inner personalities in 16 enchanting poems. It₂s a doggie delight! These dogs beg to be patted, tickled, scratched, and ruffled. Which one will be your best friend?

--This is another delightful rhyming book that didn't suggest a workable art project.  My youngest students like to hear it after nap time.

* Not yet carrying around a tiny photo album of precious above average grandpuppy photos, but it's getting close. Maybe close enough to carry the darn plastic collection bag on walkies... 


(Used with permission of grandpuppy's parents.)




© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Pilot lights and flight crews

On behalf of your flight crew, I'd like to welcome you to the Dallas area.  We hope you have hot water.  We know you have many choices when you travel, and we thank you for choosing Southwest.

My fabulous trip to Danger Baby's wedding was ending, but my pilot had work to do.  Yes, my pilot needed to worry about hot water. 

Did you ever wake up to a very cold shower when you had a leisurely day to reignite the pilot on the hot water heater?  Silly.  It only happens when you need to be somewhere fifteen minutes ago. 

Relighting the pilot requires lots of reclining on the laundry room floor squinting into the view-finder while panicked about gas and explosions. A cold shower lowers reading comprehension of Kenmore instructions.

Thank heaven for piezo igniters.  Alas, I still feel the anxiety that went with striking matches on old gas appliances.  And it is a wonderful safety feature to have a hyperactive particulate sensor to shut down the hot water heater should a foolish person sweep behind the washer and dryer.  Oops, I went looking for odd socks and found dust bunnies instead.

I've heard of flight attendants doing good deeds.  A Southwest attendant even returned a library book a passenger left on her plane.  No pilot would get down on the laundry room floor and squint into the view finder for me.

Most of the time while I squinted, with or without bifocals, I couldn't see the flash of the igniter when I pushed the button "4-5 times rapidly".  It reminded me of other vacations when my dad wouldn't give us a quarter to put in the coin operated viewers at scenic locations like Lake McConaughy or at the top of the Aerial Tramway in Estes Park. 

This is the view we like to see from the scenic laundry room floor:

Yup.  That's the "Clean Blue Flame of Quality", the long ago slogan of the Lincoln Gas Company.  Hot showers.  Clean dishes.

Glad to sort this out for the dear friend who emailed from a western time zone, "It's a little early and I was trying to figure out how your pilot (taking you back to Texas from St. Louis) needed to worry about the hot water heater on the plane."

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Feng shui app

The very competent young woman in the office down the hall joined our table at lunch. It was crowded, and a bit jumbly. No worry, she took out her cell phone and used her feng shi app "in real time" to improve the seating arrangement. It's not often someone uses three phrases that make me nervous in just one sentence. I can't pronounce fong schwee, my understanding of apps in hazy, and I don't get what other kind of time there is besides real. If she could have fit "paradigm" into the sentence, I would have had to go home sick.

True, my condo home is sick. It's very crowded and super jumbly, and it's even blocking my creativity. Not in a Zen sense, though. I just have too many boxes of saved recyclables for future class projects, too many stacks of unfiled files, and all the stuff for managing my dad's care and bills. Trying app magic, I held up my cell phone and pointed it toward the mess. The mess did not realign serenely.

Now I've embarked on a Big Clean. This is scary territory causing interior and psychic turmoil. Everything has to get very bad, indeed, before anything will get better. To complete the distress, the World Cup in on the cable tv, with the constant tooting of plastic horns.

Please point your feng shui app in my direction any real time soon. Thanks.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Take me out of the bathtub

"Blogging" means "plumbing repair procrastination" in some primitive languages. My lavatory faucet needs to be replaced. Besides being ugly and lime-encrusted, which I'm used to, it is dripping waaaaaaayyy too much. Bought the replacement faucet at Home Depot. I know I can do the job if I say the right primitive incantations, but it is too daunting after a day at work.

Plumbing is the tune of the day. I couldn't help myself, and broke into song reading Alan Katz title poem in the picture book Take Me Out of the Bathtub right in front of innocent children. I'm usually so self-conscious about my tone-deafness, that I lip-sync "Happy Birthday To You", but the silly song versions broke past my inhibitions. The children couldn't stop singing "Take Me Out of the Bathtub" the rest of the afternoon.



I tried looking it up*, but I can't find it. I'm sure I read statistics that the song known by the most people in the U.S. is "Take Me Out To the Ballgame", with "I've Been Working On the Railroad" second, ahead of "Happy Birthday", "Twinkle-Twinkle", and our national anthem. The report suggested if you ever had to lead a sing-along to keep people from panicking in an emergency situation, you had better lead off with the seventh inning stretch song. I find this useful information, and if I ever again have to bravely lead a group of children away from a barf scene to prevent copycat up-chucking, I will burst into baseball song.


*In 1941 Thurber published a story titled "You Could Look It Up," in The Saturday Evening Post. It dealt with a baseball manager who in the course of a tight game sent a midget up to the plate because his strike zone would be so small that the opposing pitcher couldn't help walking him. After the count had reached three balls and no strikes the pitcher, desperately trying to get the ball over the plate, threw such a fat pitch that the midget couldn't resist swinging at it. The ball dribbled a few feet, and the midget was thrown out. The story ended with the manager's setting a new record for throwing a midget.

And thanks to my boss for wondering aloud about the history of the baseball song. Jack Norworth wrote the lyrics in 1908.



© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Needlenose needs

Thank heaven we all had cell phones. How else could we call each other to enquire regarding the whereabouts of the needlenose pliers?

This Christmas the pliers were in high demand. First the headlights knob in the Buick broke, not for the first time. Visits to several auto shops failed to find the standard package of generic replacement knobs, so we were had to turn the lights on and off with the needlenose pliers. Three grownup drivers sharing one '96 Buick, plus one pair of pliers.

It was my turn to drive the Buick to Barnes and Noble when I got the call. "Mom, when can you be back here with the needlenose pliers? My key just broke off in the front door lock." I'm on my way to save the day.

My nephew is turning sixteen. Sure, he wants a car. It might be better if he got his own pair of needlenose pliers. Maybe I could have them engraved.

Sixteen is all about feeling invincible. Real life is all about breaking down that illusion, and dealing with the breakdowns.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Petula Clark cleans out her folks' house

"Don't Dive In Your Own Dang Dumpster" is the first hit single for Petula's comeback. The flip side of the 45 rpm is "When You're Alone and Life Is Making You Lonely You Can Always Move Into Assisted Living."

Petula doesn't wear make-up by Yardley for this music video. She is too sweaty dragging that ancient couch out of the basement to heave into the Dumpsters R Us construction container plunked on the driveway. Sometimes it is necessary to rearrange the contents of the twenty-yard dumpster in order to accommodate more and more. This can be done by pushing the contents while standing on the dumpster side rails, but should NOT be done by diving. Just FYI, Petula might want to put the biggest junk in first.


© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

I'm not a doorbell, but I play one on t.v.

How many months does it take to screw in a door chime? Maybe another one. Back in February the doorbell went crackerdog-flopbot. It was buzzing loudly. Normal low-cost remedies, like chasing all the spiders out of the chime box, did not help. I disconnected the whole gizmo.

I eventually dragged my carcass into Home Depot to buy a Do It Yourself doorbell repair kit. How difficult can it be? Hubris alert! Voop-Voop! Hubris alert!


Unpacked the kit on the kitchen table. Since I have to shut off the circuit for the overhead lights to fix the doorbell, I can only work on it when there's lots of daylight in the upstairs hall.

Weeks went by. Occasionally someone tried to ring my doorbell. I saved ten bucks by not hearing the Girl Scout cookie salesgirl.

The first time I visited the woman who would become my walking buddy for going on fifteen years now, I was impressed with her front door intercom button. It said, "Don't talk to me. I'm broken." Well, actually, that was written on the button panel. Many days I've felt like wearing a sign with that message. What my doorbell needed was a message:



A close runner-up was, "I'm a doorbell, not an engineer."

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

The new printer's devil

Took my lucky pen to the persuasive writing workshop at the Dallas Morning News today. So many pointers to record!

Yesterday the kindergarten students made styrofoam prints of their skeleton drawings--black ink on white paper. Bones made a perfect match for their ability and the linear necessities of drawing into Styrofoam. Alas, my choice was made because of my calcium musings and not brilliant teacher insight. Still, success is good!

Don't know when the pen began to leak. The ink on my hands seemed leftover from the printmaking, not fresh during the writing workshop. None of the editorial writers or volunteer contributors mentioned that I had odd, rapidly-multiplying black spots on my face. Maybe they thought I was going to a Halloween party as the bubonic plague, or else they were awfully polite.

This brings to mind the phrase, "printer's devil". A printer's apprentice was always covered in black ink from head to toe, like an art teacher. Wikipedia offers other explanations for the expression.

Looking in the mirror, I wondered what happened to our media-fueled obsession with black mold. Stachybotrys was the asbestos of the mid-Nineties, but when did it last make headlines? This is what the Center for Disease Control currently advises:

What should people to do if they determine they have Stachybotrys chartarum (Stachybotrys atra) in their buildings or homes?
Mold growing in homes and buildings, whether it is Stachybotrys chartarum (Stachybotrys atra) or other molds, indicates that there is a problem with water or moisture. This is the first problem that needs to be addressed. Mold growth can be removed from hard surfaces with commercial products, soap and water, or a bleach solution of no more than 1 cup of bleach in 1 gallon of water. Mold in or under carpets typically requires that the carpets be removed. Once mold starts to grow in insulation or wallboard, the only way to deal with the problem is by removal and replacement. We do not believe that one needs to take any different precautions with Stachybotrys chartarum (Stachybotrys atra), than with other molds. In areas where flooding has occurred, prompt drying out of materials and cleaning of walls and other flood-damaged items with commercial products, soap and water, or a bleach solution of no more than 1 cup of bleach in 1 gallon of water is necessary to prevent mold growth. Never mix bleach with ammonia or other household cleaners. If a home has been flooded, it also may be contaminated with sewage. (See: After a Hurricane or Flood: Cleanup of Flood Water [external link]) Moldy items should be removed from living areas.

Summary
In summary, Stachybotrys chartarum (Stachybotrys atra) and other molds may cause health symptoms that are nonspecific. At present there is no test that proves an association between Stachybotrys chartarum (Stachybotrys atra) and particular health symptoms. ...

What should persuasive writing students with spotty faces do? The CDC recommends not worrying about it until after trick-or-treating.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Carrier recoil

Why must I pay the labor to replace my two-year old Carrier Performance N Coil-Vertical Evaporator Coil? The defective coil has caused my HVAC system to leak Puron and waste expensive electricity this whole hot Texas summer. I've paid for service calls and replacement Puron for the system that was supposed to save me money. My clothes and belongings in the closet downstairs from the defective coil have been ruined by condensate dripping through the ceiling. The ceiling and carpet are both stained.

In early June the serviceman couldn't find the Puron leak caused by the bad Carrier coil. He replenished the Puron, but it's just been leaking ever since. On hot and humid days the a/c ran almost continuously.

Today's serviceman located the leak in the coil. My Carrier warranty will provide a new coil, a $1600 part. The warranty won't cover the labor cost. On my upflow system the replacement of the evaporator coil requires removing the furnace just to get to the coil. Two or three big, brawny HVAC techs for several hours at an estimated labor cost of $795.00.

I'm learning that my Carrier coil experience is far from unique. Should you need to replace your HVAC system it would be wise to recoil from a Carrier.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Heckle, Jekyll, and pleats

What is kilter, and why am I out of it? I had plenty of AA Energizers to replace the thermostat batteries, but the temperature sensor still seems out of whack. It's quite comfortable in the condo, but the thermostat is displaying the temp as 80 degrees.



The expression "off-kilter" uses the word kilter, which means "good condition". To be off-kilter is to be faulty. The word is first seen in the 1630's and 40's, as the English word kelter. Other than this, the origin is unknown. The related expression "out of kilter" indicates being way into disorder and confusion, and does NOT mean dancing without one's pleated skirt! You can be thrown out of kilter, and you can be thrown out of some bars for dancing on a table without your skirt, whether or not you have tattoos. It's a Tricki-Woo world!

Maybe kelter is kin to helter and skelter, hurly-burly, harum-scarum, and pell-mell. They all appeared in English usage in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to express uncontrolled motion and direction.

My preschool girl students are on-kilter, not off. Pleated skirts seem to be their new favorite style. Most of their pleated skirts are skorts with built-in shorts. The term skort is much more recent than helter, kelter, or skelter. Part culotte and part miniskirt, skorts were a huge improvement on bloomer gymsuits for active females beginning in the 1960s.

Since the Buick went cracker-dog and flop-bott this weekend, I don't want the air conditioner to be out of whack. Out of whack means confused and not working as it should, although I'm still unclear about the origin of whack. Whatever it is, I bet I can't afford the repairs right now!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Early Rabbit Warning System

The brain is an amazing thing. Somewhere in my subconscious there's an indication on my Permanent Record that I'm Very Afraid the class rabbit will get out of the school building on my watch. So when my subconscious wanted to alert me to a malfunctioning air conditioner at twelve midnight, an escapee rabbit went running amok in the parking lot of my dream. Little dream preschoolers were all screaming in Edvard Munch horror, "The rabbit is out! The rabbit is out!"

Dang! Instantly I was sitting straight up, wide awake, feeling the adrenalin race through my body. Pour a pot of truck stop coffee right into my veins and bark, "Timmy's in the well!"

The a/c was running, running, running the same way the rabbit was running dream loops around the parking lot. Over my pounding heart I could eventually hear the dripping of the over-worked a/c condenser coils down into my closet and light fixture. Not again! My fight-or-flight rush helped me put buckets under the drips, adjust the thermostat, pour bleach down the condensate drain, and check the furnace filter.

Friday was an extremely oppressive, hot and muggy day with dreadful air quality. The poor air conditioner had done its best in the battle. I would be wide awake for three more hours to appreciate its efforts, and to worry and plan the fall art class syllabus. Thanks to the Early Rabbit Warning System, the dripping was into a bucket. Condo ownership nightmare averted. Munch mission accomplished.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

And Eve said, "Let there be coasters."

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the remote control.

And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept on the comfy couch with the television droning on and on about the BCS, and his cold drink leaving water marks on the coffee table.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Caulk and grout season returns

Here it is only the third of September, and I'm replacing the flush and refill mechanisms on a toilet. Home Depot loves me every September when my condo bathrooms seem to fall apart. I was there twice before noon today. Please, please, please let all the tile stay on the shower walls this September!

There are many repairs that can be ignored for so long they become invisible to the homeowner. Flushing toilets are not in that category.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Greased pig wrestling

Don't tell PETA--it wasn't an animal at the county fair! I wrestled a greasy, deceased over-the-range microwave oven out of the wall and down to the dumpster. Yes, my Sharp is riding that big Carousel turntable in the sky.

It had been installed on the cheap by a previous condo owner. The electrical cord was cut, and the wires stripped and twisted under connection caps tucked behind the drywall. The wiring probably went to a harvest gold range hood back when the condo was built around 1980. That's a bit too scary for me.





There's a hilarious greased pig photo in the Bloomington, Indiana Herald Times of July 8, 2007. I'm not interested in debating the cruelty of this old time county fair event. I just want to have a hot shower.

Installing a replacement shouldn't be as greasy an operation. I get my Rosie The Riveter Meets Helen Reddy mindset going, but I probably shouldn't install a grounded outlet or try to lift a fifty pound appliance while attaching it to a mounting frame! I am woman, hear me roar, hear me call for a handyperson. I am strong, I am invincible, I am not an electician.


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Emits Showers of Cold Water

Part II of Light Fuse Get Away Fast.

Warning labels on fireworks always make me laugh. Emits Showers Of Sparks. Well, I sure hope so. That's why I bought it!

There should be a cautionary label on those black "snakes" that said Leaves Ugly Marks On Driveway. Makes Your Mom Crabby. That would be more useful.

Speaking of crabby moms, my Kenmore gas water heater's pilot light won't stay lit. Two mornings of cold showers make a mom irritable, especially with dirty dishes piling up, and waiting around for the gas company technician. Get to sit around again tomorrow waiting for the Kenmore serviceman. The darn water heater is only two and a half years old. It has a piezo push-button igniter, so I don't have to light matches or pray that my hair won't erupt in flames. Contortions are still required to watch for the "clean blue flame of quality" through the little window two inches off the ground while holding down the gas knob with one hand and pushing the igniter button quickly and repeatedly with the other while spiders dance on my head.

This would be a nice time for the hummingbirds to pay a visit to cheer me up.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder