Rain Forest Convenience Store

Life is what happens while we are standing there with Robert Frost. The roads diverge and we’re just wondering which is the quickest to a gas station with a clean restroom.

There are different routes between Dallas and Nebraska's capital city, but for just getting it done and getting there, Interstate 35 is best. The gas station with a clean restroom is sometimes a challenge, so I'm pleased to report my discovery of the clean and cute Rainforest Convenience Store/Conoco in Ardmore, OK. Many miles have passed since then, but I think the exit was number 32, or 31B, near the intersection of 12th Ave NW and Rockford Rd N.

Maybe I've just never seen a gas station with a theme, but my brief stop cheered me up. The interior was nice and jungly. It was too early in the day to visit the Bat Cave walk-in beverage cooler, though. I marched back to the Buick wearing an imaginary pith helmet and carrying a mental machete for my expedition north.

Danger Baby has recommended summer reading for me. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann, sounds just my style. I've promised myself a long read and then a nap this holiday.

The past couple months have offered many opportunities to second guess decisions and choices as we three siblings helped our elderly father in Nebraska. On the drive home I struggled to recall a poem I once had memorized. So here is Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken":


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.


© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

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.

The Sloth Movement

After the second day of Amazon camp, a kindergarten student insisted her mom take her to the library to get books about the rain forest. There are few things that cheer me as much as when a student gets hooked on the public library. The student in question was so excited about the illustration of a three-toed sloth she found, she could hardly wait until class to share it.

On the fourth day she came to class wearing a claw necklace. It probably came from Oriental Trading Co. as a plastic bear claw party favor, but we pronounced it a sloth claw, then started laughing. "Sloth claw, cole slaw!" I used to take a Tupperware container of sloth claw to my ex's family reunion picnics. Talk about your exotic animals!

Tree sloths are smaller than I imagined. My library book explains that they are only two feet in length full grown. I was thinking of the Ice Age giant ground sloth fossil at the University of Nebraska State Museum. Tree sloths style their hair with green algae, but they can't match their Ice Age relatives for strangeness.

About now you may be wondering about the Seven Deadly Sins, since you survived twelfth grade English and only have those terrifying flashbacks a couple times a month now. Afraid you will forget the seven, along with Snow White's dwarfs, but afraid you will never forget the torture of Spenser's The Faerie Queen, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Dante's Inferno...you reach for the Tums.


Pride is excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.

Envy is the desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.

Gluttony is an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.

Lust is an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.

Anger is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury. It is also known as Wrath.

Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.

Sloth is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work.