A little lost in time and historic events

I went over to Life Care at 4:45 to feed Dad.  He kept sleeping, so I read my book.  I was about to give up and come home when he woke up at seven.  I fed him.  Sometimes he seemed to be saying 4, 5, 13, 14.  After awhile I realized he was saying letters, I, Q, U, I.  Finally he said L I Q U I D perfectly clear.  I gave him water.  He spelled it three more times.  Very bizarre.  


I couldn't have been more stunned if Helen Keller signed it in my palm. That moment is still like yesterday in my mind, but I started the post on the nineteenth.  Since then my sister came to see Dad. Danger Baby and his precious wife have been here after their Alaska trip because they couldn't fly back to NYC due to Hurricane Irene. They brought souvenir clouds and rain from their cruise.

The Woolly Mammoth's apartment in D.C. did not flood, and his girlfriend made chile/cheese soft pretzels.  I hope she will teach me how to make them when they visit for Labor Day.  Oh, and school started.  And I went on a gigantic grocery shopping and food prep spree. Made an old favorite, ravioli salad* for Danger Baby. Made more nectar for the hummingbirds.


This afternoon Danger Baby and I arrived during the hospice RN's  visit.  I got some information that is not just anecdotal for a change.  Dad's heart rate is 49/min.  It has been declining slowly but steadily for weeks. If  Dad were in a hospital situation, they would be trying everything to get it up over 60/min. Dad's lungs have lots of fluid that no treatment will really remove.  His breathing is very shallow, and his lungs do not expand.  Dad is still responsive, and can smile when requested.  He is not in pain. Medication is available should pain become a problem, or for agitation. We are to be even more careful feeding Dad, and to stop any time he starts coughing until he can clear his throat.

The nurse's educated guess is that Dad's heart rate will continue decreasing. He will stop taking food or liquids.  He will sleep more and more, and be unresponsive when awake. When we were leaving I told Dad, "See you tomorrow."  Then he told his grandson, "See you tomorrow."  I explained again that Danger Baby will fly back to NYC tomorrow morning, so Dad said, "Toodle-loo."

*To make ravioli salad first drive your cart up and down and up and down and up and down the frozen food aisles at Kroger.  Finally ask for help.  The store brand frozen mini cheese ravioli is on the top shelf of the freezer.  Cook the ravioli as directed, drain and cool.  Cut up cherry tomatoes, baby carrots, and bell pepper.  Cut up the artichoke hearts and pitted olives from the deli olive bar at Tom Thumb.  Add to ravioli in large glass bowl.  Make a vinaigrette.  Look up the spelling, AGAIN.  1/4 cup rice vinegar, 3/4 cup olive oil, dry mustard, fresh oregano, basil, and sage, dry thyme, squeeze of lemon, fresh ground black pepper, and 1/8 t honey. Mix in the blender.  Pour 1/3 to 1/2 the dressing over the ravioli mix.  Gently stir with rubber spatula while admiring the pretty colors and popping a few mini raviolis into your mouth which is the chef-mommy's duty to taste test.


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Ike warnings

Perhaps it is fortuitous that we are waiting this weekend to see what an Ike will bring. "Ike" should call to mind a warning this election year. A hurricane named "Ike" can remind us that much of tv weathercasting is hype designed to get all of us a tad hysterical. An earlier Ike warning would alert us to look behind the facades and sound bites of both campaigns to examine their real strategies for the serious problems we are facing in our families, communities, nation, and world.

I'm insulted that the campaigns have regressed to pigs and pitbulls, with or without cosmetic products. It's like being trapped in a high school pep rally watching cheerleader skits and the chanting adoration of the jocks. Could we please, as individuals and as a nation, grow up?

The earlier Ike warned us that "only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing" of government and business interests for the security, peace, liberty, and democratic process to flourish. President Eisenhower was speaking about the dangerous influence of the military-industrial complex at his farewell address in January of 1961, but his warning applies to every aspect of our national life today.

The real "change" that must come about in this election is not a buzzword, but an electorate demanding more from it's politicians than it does from the grocery check-out aisle magazines. We must show that we can understand ideas, ask difficult questions, and recognize the difference between a "reality show" and reality. We must show our understanding that we as a nation are playing for keeps.

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Condo Hostile/College Hostel

This evening I'm hosting migrating Tulane students in the condo. This may not make my condo neighbors ecstatic, but they will live through it. The Tulane students were displaced by Katrina, and ended up in my son's dorm in New Mexico last fall. For a cultural exchange, my son's high school lunch gang is here, too.

I've never been a care-free world traveler. I've never even been an extremely tense world traveler. I may have been the last mother to haul cloth diapers and a stinky diaper pail on a road trip. Funny thing, the diaper pail seems like year before last, but it was really 1983. I can still smell the Desitin diaper rash cream.

Performing Your Requests

My Wednesday afternoon preschoolers begged me to "read" the Blue Dog book to them again today. The book is actually Blue Dog Man, by George Rodrigue. I don't really read the book. I show the pictures, the paintings of Blue Dog sitting in different locations or against different backdrops, most often alone, sometimes wearing a necktie. We all brainstorm stories about what's on the mind of Rodrigue's mysterious canine icon. We laugh hysterically at our stories.

I paid full price for Blue Dog Man five years ago, and the book has more than paid me back every year. Three year olds love it. Learning difference elementary students love it. Pre-adolescents with emotional problems relate to Blue Dog, open up, and give me great insights into how they understand the world. I mention this because you can find copies used or at bargain prices now.


The big hits in today's "reading" were paintings with swirling backgrounds. Students told me Blue Dog was beside a weather map, or in a hurricane. They don't know that Blue Dog was "born" in New Orleans, where Rodrigue has lived for sixteen years. Rodrigue has a special Blue Dog silkscreen print, "We Will Rise Again", to benefit the Southeast Louisiana Chapter of the American Red Cross. Check it out.

Imagine Blue Dog, wearing a suit and tie, sitting at the keyboard of a piano bar. The cocktail waitresses whisper the patrons' requests in his ear, and slip a buck or two into the glass on the piano. Imagine Blue Dog being asked to play "Born Free" and "Impossible Dream".

In August of '68 our family went to Estes Park, Colorado, on vacation. This is my neatly written cursive account of a memorable evening at a favorite fancy restaurant:

We left McCook about ten. About twelve we stopped at a rest stop and saw a tiny lizard. [My sister] wanted to take it home...Later we had lunch at the Chicken Inn in Ft. Morgan. CRUMBY! It rained all the way from Loveland to Estes, going up the Big Thompson canyon. It was kind of spooky. We checked in to room 5 (same as last time). After awhile we went to the Coach House. [My brother] had some problems what with the trout and candlelight. Later in the evening Donna Lee from Laurence, Nebraska played for us. She was "juz dalighted" to play Born Free, Love Is Blue, and The Impossible Dream for us. Then we skipped rockes [sic] at Lake Estes.

A year or so earlier I wrote about our first visit to the restaurant, and noted that "we even got buckaroos", the Estes equivalent of a "Shirley Temple" or "Roy Rogers". Apparently my sister was so impressed she, "announced that when she grew up she was going to be a cocktail waitress."

My brother had a notoriously uneasy stomach when we were kids. In '68 he stared at the flickering candlelit eye of the trout reclining on its plate next to the jumbo foil-wrapped baked potato with sour cream. The trout stared back.

The trout and my brother should have sat up to the piano bar and had a few buckaroos. Blue Dog would have played their requests.

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go....

Born free, as free as the wind blows
As free as the grass grows
Born free to follow your heart...

Blue, blue, my world is blue,
blue is my world now I'm without you

Doppler Mama

First order of business this morning was folding up all the plastic drop cloths covering our computers at work. They hadn't been needed. Our area received not one single solitary drop of rain from Hurricane Rita. My son in Indiana saw more Rita rain than we did.

Second order of business is kicking the Weather Channel habit. For the last month I've spent way more time in front of the tv than normal, mostly looking at reporters wearing hooded raingear and standing knee deep in dark, oily liquid.
It never occurred to me while perusing the Occupational Outlook Handbook in the early Seventies that live disaster reporting would be a growth occupation.

I look at these soggy cub reporters saying, "I can barely see my hand in front of my face," and, "we've been unable to verify the reports of a downed street light in the next block," and wonder what special qualifications they have. Do they just show up for the job with a willingness to have buckets of cold liquid dumped down their neck like a football coach?

I grew up with Barbie dolls and Dare Wright's books about the Lonely Doll. For better or worse, these still influence me.


Houses, hotels, pets, automobiles, and ships were all caught up in the disaster.

This is not a comment on the Halliburton subsidiaries' lucrative contracts to clean up after Katrina, even though it is "Monopoly".

Who is this chicken? Is he here for a photo op?


Back to you.

Getting windy

An hour ago I was watching a hummingbird visit the red cannas and butterfly weed on my patio. Now, when I walked outside to go get the mail, I could hear a little screech owl calling. Screech owls aren't very loud birds, so I knew it was very close. A few steps across the parking lot, and I could tell it was in the tree above me. It flew off to the north, probably still annoyed at being awakened midafternoon.



Now the sun is back out. It's still windy. I wonder what will happen next.

The Emergency Preparedness Diet

If Rita doesn't arrive in the DFW metroplex soon and knock out all the power with Category One winds, I'm going to be stuck with the six cans of tuna fish, the large bag of charcoal briquettes, the Tang, and that big jar of creamy peanut butter ("Choosy mothers choose Jif"). Now that I consider the menu options, it sounds just like the miracle three-day diet my friend is trying, except without the cottage cheese.



I figured I would use the charcoal to broil the frozen chix boobs, petite sirloin, fish, and hamburger that would go bad in the freezer during a prolonged power failure. When that was gone, I would start in on the canned tuna fish. Spoonfuls of PB would be my high-pro breakfasts, washed down with Tang. Maybe I would lose ten pounds the first week!

While none of us want to be a storm evacuee, and we would not wish the loss of home and community on any person, some folks are experiencing disaster envy. What people in North Texas could really use is three to five days snowed-in by a major blizzard! Inability to leave home by the forces of Mother Nature could be such a gift! What opportunities to finish projects, relax with family, or listen to real weather itself, not weather radio. In the spirit of Laura Ingalls Wilder, I could burn all the magazines I don't have time to read in the fireplace to keep from freezing! Of course, I would worry about the hummingbirds and butterflies that were flying around my patio just now...

Tropical Storm Earl

Chatted a bit with an elderly couple traveling west while we all consumed our motel RDA of grape jelly and toast. We are all staring at the Weather Channel report of Hurricane Charley's devastation in Florida. I say that I hope the next storms don't hit New Mexico. Huh??? The couple and the motel clerk stare at me.

"One of them is named Earl", I say.

Beat one,

two,

three...

"Yup. Earl could do that", says the elderly lady firmly.

I know we are both seeing Hurricane Earl in our imaginations as a sweaty fat guy wearing a gimme cap and overalls with no shirt. We wink at each other.