It took staff and volunteers many weekend wheelbarrow hours to shovel, move, and rake the thick layer of cushioning chips. It was hard work, and I was not there, off reading book reviews instead.
© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder
Showing posts with label playground words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label playground words. Show all posts
9/27/11
Shovel-ready woodchicks
How many chips could a woodchick chuck? Don't know, but the new layer of cushioning woodchips on the playground was a big hit with the slippery-sliders. Having a truck dump woodchips was a tongue-twisting delight for connoisseurs of preschool language.
It took staff and volunteers many weekend wheelbarrow hours to shovel, move, and rake the thick layer of cushioning chips. It was hard work, and I was not there, off reading book reviews instead.
© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder
It took staff and volunteers many weekend wheelbarrow hours to shovel, move, and rake the thick layer of cushioning chips. It was hard work, and I was not there, off reading book reviews instead.
© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder
3/14/10
18-hour Playtex cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye
Thank heaven for the arrival of spring break. I'm hung-up, under-wired, and wrung-out. What that means in my fifty-something life is I'm as as tired as a bra-strap caught on the cosmic washing machine agitator. I've been pulled this way and that for a whole cycle, stretched thin. When I finally get into deep sleep, I have nightmares of shopping for bras.
Tide and Bounce sitting in a tree. K I SS I N G.
Cross my heart promise:
Phrase uttered by children after making a promise to indicate the depth of their sincerity: the speaker is so committed to the action just agreed to that they offer self-inflicted pain and a death wish as proof of their seriousness. Must be accompanied by a gesture of drawing a imaginary X across the speaker's own heart, or else it doesn't count.
© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder
Tide and Bounce sitting in a tree. K I SS I N G.
Cross my heart promise:
Phrase uttered by children after making a promise to indicate the depth of their sincerity: the speaker is so committed to the action just agreed to that they offer self-inflicted pain and a death wish as proof of their seriousness. Must be accompanied by a gesture of drawing a imaginary X across the speaker's own heart, or else it doesn't count.
© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder
4/3/07
Hula hoops vs. Embroidery hoops on Field 3 or Mamas vs. Dopplers
Mama is versing a hail storm tonight. Am I singing Our National Anthem at a Rangers' game in Arlington? No. Am I doing a dramatic dance with filmy scarves about that fundamental theme of literature, Man vs. Nature, as taught to me by Miss Madsen on a day when she wasn't throwing dictionaries? No. Were the Mamas scheduled to play the Storm before the game was rained out? Is this the Old Mama and the Sea? No:
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air...
The sky is yellow-gray here, not red. I'm watching o'er the back fence instead of the ramparts or the backstop as the hail pounds down. True, there's not as much water gallantly streaming down my furnace as there was during Friday night's storm, but it's still a bigger condo roof leak than acceptable.
The kids on the playground were talking about the soccer teams they'll be "versing" this weekend. It's one of those mangled usages that makes Collage Mama more volatile than any Texas hail storm--in the same category as people chewing toothpicks in public, and men wearing hats indoors. What they do in their own trailer homes is their concern, but out here in the wide world they better cut it out before Collage Mama shows up on Doppler weather radar. We're talking Eye of the hurricane versing Hell hath no fury!
versing
To describe an athletic contest between two teams, particulary if it involves a Mets team, or a college football team.Who are you versing tonight in the baseball contest? competing, playing against. Derived from the common term "vs." in video games where choices are either 1 Player or 2 Player (commonly listed as "vs."). This usage, while considered incorrect by many, is extremely common with young people due to their familiarity with video games.The Lions are versing the Packers on Sunday.
verse
c.1050, "line or section of a psalm or canticle," later "line of poetry" (c.1369), from Anglo-Fr. and O.Fr. vers, from L. versus "verse, line of writing," from PIE base *wer- "to turn, bend" (see versus). The metaphor is of plowing, of "turning" from one line to another (vertere = "to turn") as a plowman does. O.E. had fers, an early W.Gmc. borrowing directly from L. Meaning "metrical composition" is recorded from c.1300; sense of "part of a modern pop song" (as distinguished from the chorus) is attested from 1927. The English N.T. first divided fully into verses in the Geneva version (1551).
versus
1447, in legal case names, denoting action of one party against another, from L. versus "turned toward or against," from pp. of vertere "to turn," from PIE *wert- "to turn, wind," from base *wer- "to turn, bend" (cf. O.E. -weard "toward," originally "turned toward," weorthan "to befall," wyrd "fate, destiny," lit. "what befalls one;" Skt. vartate "turns round, rolls;" Avestan varet- "to turn;" L. vertere (freq. versare) "to turn;" O.C.S. vruteti "to turn, roll," Rus. vreteno "spindle, distaff;" Lith. verciu "to turn;" Gk. rhatane "stirrer, ladle;" Ger. werden, O.E. weorðan "to become," for sense, cf. "to turn into;" Welsh gwerthyd "spindle, distaff;" O.Ir. frith "against").
anniversary
c.1230, from L. anniversarius "returning annually," from annus "year" (see annual) + versus, pp. of vertere "to turn" (see versus). The adj. came to be used as a noun in Church L. as anniversaria (dies) in ref. to saints' days.
Don't you dare forget your anniversary while you are versing Cletus in the watermelon spitting contest! And don't stanza close to me.
One of the most common manifestations of stanzaic form in poetry in English (and in other Western-European languages) is represented in texts for church hymns, such as the first three stanzas (of nine) from a poem by Isaac Watts (from 1719) cited immediately below (in this case, each stanza is to be sung to the same hymn-tune, composed earlier by William Croft in 1708):
Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal condo.
stanza
"group of rhymed verse lines," 1588, from It. stanza "verse of a poem," originally "standing, stopping place," from V.L. *stantia "a stanza of verse," so called from the stop at the end of it, from L. stans (gen. stantis), prp. of stare "to stand" (see stet).
Not to be confused with:
Hold me closer, Tony Danza; count the head lice on the highway.
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air...
The sky is yellow-gray here, not red. I'm watching o'er the back fence instead of the ramparts or the backstop as the hail pounds down. True, there's not as much water gallantly streaming down my furnace as there was during Friday night's storm, but it's still a bigger condo roof leak than acceptable.
The kids on the playground were talking about the soccer teams they'll be "versing" this weekend. It's one of those mangled usages that makes Collage Mama more volatile than any Texas hail storm--in the same category as people chewing toothpicks in public, and men wearing hats indoors. What they do in their own trailer homes is their concern, but out here in the wide world they better cut it out before Collage Mama shows up on Doppler weather radar. We're talking Eye of the hurricane versing Hell hath no fury!
versing
To describe an athletic contest between two teams, particulary if it involves a Mets team, or a college football team.Who are you versing tonight in the baseball contest? competing, playing against. Derived from the common term "vs." in video games where choices are either 1 Player or 2 Player (commonly listed as "vs."). This usage, while considered incorrect by many, is extremely common with young people due to their familiarity with video games.The Lions are versing the Packers on Sunday.
verse
c.1050, "line or section of a psalm or canticle," later "line of poetry" (c.1369), from Anglo-Fr. and O.Fr. vers, from L. versus "verse, line of writing," from PIE base *wer- "to turn, bend" (see versus). The metaphor is of plowing, of "turning" from one line to another (vertere = "to turn") as a plowman does. O.E. had fers, an early W.Gmc. borrowing directly from L. Meaning "metrical composition" is recorded from c.1300; sense of "part of a modern pop song" (as distinguished from the chorus) is attested from 1927. The English N.T. first divided fully into verses in the Geneva version (1551).
versus
1447, in legal case names, denoting action of one party against another, from L. versus "turned toward or against," from pp. of vertere "to turn," from PIE *wert- "to turn, wind," from base *wer- "to turn, bend" (cf. O.E. -weard "toward," originally "turned toward," weorthan "to befall," wyrd "fate, destiny," lit. "what befalls one;" Skt. vartate "turns round, rolls;" Avestan varet- "to turn;" L. vertere (freq. versare) "to turn;" O.C.S. vruteti "to turn, roll," Rus. vreteno "spindle, distaff;" Lith. verciu "to turn;" Gk. rhatane "stirrer, ladle;" Ger. werden, O.E. weorðan "to become," for sense, cf. "to turn into;" Welsh gwerthyd "spindle, distaff;" O.Ir. frith "against").
anniversary
c.1230, from L. anniversarius "returning annually," from annus "year" (see annual) + versus, pp. of vertere "to turn" (see versus). The adj. came to be used as a noun in Church L. as anniversaria (dies) in ref. to saints' days.
Don't you dare forget your anniversary while you are versing Cletus in the watermelon spitting contest! And don't stanza close to me.
One of the most common manifestations of stanzaic form in poetry in English (and in other Western-European languages) is represented in texts for church hymns, such as the first three stanzas (of nine) from a poem by Isaac Watts (from 1719) cited immediately below (in this case, each stanza is to be sung to the same hymn-tune, composed earlier by William Croft in 1708):
Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal condo.
stanza
"group of rhymed verse lines," 1588, from It. stanza "verse of a poem," originally "standing, stopping place," from V.L. *stantia "a stanza of verse," so called from the stop at the end of it, from L. stans (gen. stantis), prp. of stare "to stand" (see stet).
Not to be confused with:
Hold me closer, Tony Danza; count the head lice on the highway.
9/23/06
Playground Games--Changed and Same
Do you want to go to the Tank Playground, the Rocket Playground, or the Ninja Turtle Playground over by Schimelpfenig Library? That used to be the question for my young sons on a nice afternoon like this. The City of Plano Recreation Department had different names for the parks--Liberty, Copper Creek, and Memorial--but the boys knew them by their favorite games on each playground's equipment.
Burning off energy was the main goal of playground outings. Put a check by each outing objective:
Twenty years ago when my sons were small, the main playground games involved becoming one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and making the right mouth sound effects for that Turtle's favorite weapon.
Main article: List of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters
Leonardo - The de facto leader of the Turtles, Leonardo is courageous, decisive, and a disciplined student of martial arts. As a strict adherent to Bushido, he has a very strong sense of honor and justice. He wears a blue mask and wields a pair of katana. He is named after Leonardo da Vinci.
Raphael - The team "anti-hero", Raphael has an aggressive nature and seldom hesitates to throw the first punch. His personality can be alternately fierce, sarcastic, and full of angst. He wears a red mask and wields a pair of sai. He is named after Raphael Sanzio.
Michelangelo - The easy-going and free-spirited Michelangelo provides much of the comic relief. While he loves to read comics and eat pizza, this Turtle also has an adventurous side. He wears an orange mask and wields the nunchaku. He is named after Michelangelo Buonarroti.
Donatello - The brilliant scientist, inventor, and technology geek, Donatello has a reputation as something of a smart aleck. He is perhaps the most non-violent Turtle, preferring to use his intellect to solve conflicts. He wears a purple mask and wields the bo. He is named after Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi.
This week I've been on playground duty. I've watched elementary school girls trying to jump rope. Bet it's been forty years since I jumped rope or twirled. Had to travel way, way, way back in Mr. Peabody's Way Back Machine to find the long-term memory for jump rope. Once I got there, I remembered how we "choked up" on a rope to make it the correct length for our height.
The girls who weren't jumping rope were playing "avatars"! The leader of the girls was assigning the avatar roles--earth, air, fire, and water. Good grief! Whatever happened to playing Beatles' Stewardesses?! John, Paul, George, and Ringo?
According to Urban Dictionary, there are "elemental television series" out there somewhere--
... series where the central characters have the ability to manipulate the classical elements (water, fire, earth, air/wind, and aether/metal depending on the culture). Some series include extra elements, such as ice, spirit, darkness, light, thunder, metal, etc. in the series, the elementalists must battle an evil, and when one element is absent, they usually cannot carry out their objective. They are strongest when united. Also, each character's personality is usually reflected on their element. ex: fire is rash and impulsive; water is calm and collective; earth is nurturing and loyal; air is inquisitive and curious.
Some examples of elemental television series are:
Avatar: The Last Airbender
W.I.T.C.H.
Sailor Moon
Captain Planet
Xiaolin Showdown
Thank heaven I don't have to watch the shows! Joseph Campbell would be able to find the connections between avatars, Ninja Turtles, and Beatles stewardesses. For now, though, I'm going over to the playground patio to try mastering jacks. Please don't ask me to hula hoop, no matter how holistic it is for the "circle of life"! I think the sound of the bouncing golf ball doing "pigs in the pigpen" on the concrete will be very rhythmic and therapeutic.
Burning off energy was the main goal of playground outings. Put a check by each outing objective:
Twenty years ago when my sons were small, the main playground games involved becoming one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and making the right mouth sound effects for that Turtle's favorite weapon.
Main article: List of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters
Leonardo - The de facto leader of the Turtles, Leonardo is courageous, decisive, and a disciplined student of martial arts. As a strict adherent to Bushido, he has a very strong sense of honor and justice. He wears a blue mask and wields a pair of katana. He is named after Leonardo da Vinci.
Raphael - The team "anti-hero", Raphael has an aggressive nature and seldom hesitates to throw the first punch. His personality can be alternately fierce, sarcastic, and full of angst. He wears a red mask and wields a pair of sai. He is named after Raphael Sanzio.
Michelangelo - The easy-going and free-spirited Michelangelo provides much of the comic relief. While he loves to read comics and eat pizza, this Turtle also has an adventurous side. He wears an orange mask and wields the nunchaku. He is named after Michelangelo Buonarroti.
Donatello - The brilliant scientist, inventor, and technology geek, Donatello has a reputation as something of a smart aleck. He is perhaps the most non-violent Turtle, preferring to use his intellect to solve conflicts. He wears a purple mask and wields the bo. He is named after Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi.
This week I've been on playground duty. I've watched elementary school girls trying to jump rope. Bet it's been forty years since I jumped rope or twirled. Had to travel way, way, way back in Mr. Peabody's Way Back Machine to find the long-term memory for jump rope. Once I got there, I remembered how we "choked up" on a rope to make it the correct length for our height.
The girls who weren't jumping rope were playing "avatars"! The leader of the girls was assigning the avatar roles--earth, air, fire, and water. Good grief! Whatever happened to playing Beatles' Stewardesses?! John, Paul, George, and Ringo?
According to Urban Dictionary, there are "elemental television series" out there somewhere--
... series where the central characters have the ability to manipulate the classical elements (water, fire, earth, air/wind, and aether/metal depending on the culture). Some series include extra elements, such as ice, spirit, darkness, light, thunder, metal, etc. in the series, the elementalists must battle an evil, and when one element is absent, they usually cannot carry out their objective. They are strongest when united. Also, each character's personality is usually reflected on their element. ex: fire is rash and impulsive; water is calm and collective; earth is nurturing and loyal; air is inquisitive and curious.
Some examples of elemental television series are:
Avatar: The Last Airbender
W.I.T.C.H.
Sailor Moon
Captain Planet
Xiaolin Showdown
Thank heaven I don't have to watch the shows! Joseph Campbell would be able to find the connections between avatars, Ninja Turtles, and Beatles stewardesses. For now, though, I'm going over to the playground patio to try mastering jacks. Please don't ask me to hula hoop, no matter how holistic it is for the "circle of life"! I think the sound of the bouncing golf ball doing "pigs in the pigpen" on the concrete will be very rhythmic and therapeutic.
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