Mice skate close to the edge, write 8s

Thanks so much to Kim of Hummus Anonymous for getting me inspired for this week's art class.  Seeing the finger figure skates made by her daughter got me looping about the mental ice. But like most inspirations, I was caught in the crossfire of memories, images, words, and events.

Snow on the playground made Tuesday magical. Getting the smallest students bundled for a real life snow experience involved lots of turning sleeves right-side-out, and aiming thumbs into their own mitten studio apartment.

The five year olds are practicing writing the number eight.  This number is both the beautiful, graceful, double om of loops on ice, and purest torture for most young writers.  S S S, then / / /.  Link the bottom to the top.  No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, don't take that detour!  Don't double back around!

My ankles are too wobbly for skating, and my shoulder too shaky for holding the picture book back-handed.  Ed and Rebecca Emberley's picture book, Mice On Ice, added more ideas to the mix.  Next week the kids will make a 3-D ice rink.  The white crayon wax resist with the blue watercolor/black ink wash looked nicely icy.

"You are skating on thin ice" implies risky behavior without the disrespectful attitude associated with "pushing your luck". While I was pleased to find Kristi Yamaguchi's Olympic "Blue Danube" program online, I can't find Mary Tyler Moore's classic figure skating spin from the early 70s.

I'm midway between the eighth anniversary of my mother's death and the first anniversary of my dad's. As Dad worked through paralyzing grief at Mom's death, he found a little window of light.  "I'll never have to watch figure skating again!"









© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Building a better mousetrap

Pounding nails into a bar of soap while chattering with my dad is such an early sensory memory.  The hammer head was small and green. The soap was old and hard, but I could smell it and the sawdust on the workbench. What was Dad building?  "A project."

Dad would say if I "built a better mousetrap the world would beat a path to my door."  I was little.  Not so sure the world beating a path was a good thing! Heck, I could barely reach the doorknob standing on tiptoe. Mom insisted I not open the door to strangers.

We are devising library rodent wildlife management plans at work. By "we", I don't actually mean me.  I like Congress better than rodents, although I wouldn't want to remove either of them from a trap.

These widdle library mice are not the characters from picture books. They do not wear ballet slippers, or visit their country cousin. They haven't gnawed through the ropes to free a lion. They don't count or mix colors of paints.

The are big dang rodents displaced by the demolition of most of our building. They found the gingerbread house in the storytime room. It's the scary Rat King from The Nutcracker, but with a trail of rodent poop.

This amazing gingerbread Capitol is from Windows Catering Company.  They have a White House, too.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

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

Asp not what your condo can do for you

Glanced out the laundry room door to the patio when I got home. Worked some yesterday out back removing canna plants and sweeping away the soapberry tree debris. I was motivated by the mice... yes those spots before my eyes during my headcold.

No matter how Beatrix Potter cutesie you might look in the book, I got no use for yoose mousies running up the legs of my gas grill. You are going down!

Instead of mice, my little laundry room glance eyes spied a snake in the canna bed. Had it enjoyed a nice mouse brunch? Was it a condo neighbor's escaped pet, "Fluffy"?

Thanks to my high school buddy, Rosencrantz, for the likely ID. Texas rat snake seems to fit.

And yes, asp is a good crossword puzzle word when viper and cobra are too long.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Little black spots before my eyes

The headcold came on slowly, just raw throats in the nighttime for a week.  Easy to blame on ragweed pollen.  Mild earache and slight stuffy nose, just job-related germ-sharing in the preschool room.  Dragged myself through a day at the library Saturday, cursing students and hanging on for a round-the-clock snooze.

Sunday the spots started.  Fell asleep while doing the crossword puzzle to wake up with newsprint on my cheek.  Fell asleep on the couch until a text message from my boss woke me:

We found this snake on our walk, 
caught in the erosion control netting. 
We set him free. Can you ID?



Just a bit of groggy field guiding and googling to identify the speckled king snake. It's a mighty handsome snake I don't really want to meet. Or maybe I do, ah-choo! King snakes are constrictors that eat other snakes, lizards, rodents, and birds.

Things deteriorated from there despite a Skype session with my intergalactic stellar grandbaby. My youngest texted asking what movie he had watched as a child with a silver spaceship and time travel. 
That would be "Flight of the Navigator".

I wondered why I was seeing zipping black dots while I stared out the patio window for a couple zombie days. Was this headache a migraine? Brain cancer? Decongestant side effect? Orange juice overdose? The slow-moving green specks that occasionally jumped from fence to plant were anole lizards, not side effects.

First sick leave day with zinc therapy, vitamins, cough Rx, inhaler, saline solution, ibuprofen and decongestants I was only able to nap and play online Legos at Build With Chrome. Second sick day, I'm lots more perky, still snozzy, but able to see that those rushing black dots are tiny scurrying mice on the patio. No OTC meds will get rid of the mice. Maybe I can borrow the speckled king snake!


© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Unintentional watermelon/uncooperative lime

Life is good.  Limes are good.  Key limes would be nice.

I received a Key lime tree at the teacher appreciation luncheon, but my patio doesn't have enough pollinators to prod the blossoms toward fruit.

That's why I've been donning butterfly wings and rushing outside with my pollinator paintbrush shortly after sunrise.

So far no baby limes, but citrus hope springs eternal.  That's why I was so dashed when I started seeing green debris on the patio.  And then there was that influx of unwanted rodentia.

Let me just say I'm totally opposed to any rodents in the condo complex setting.  I don't care if it's an escaped gerbil, or a hormonal hamster.  So why are these rodents rushing my patio?  To eat little green things!  The LGTs are not baby limes.  Instead they are falling from the sky to bonk Chicken Little upside the head.

Actually, a squirrel was up in the neighbor's soapberry tree devouring green seeds, and knocking many more to the ground for other rodent marauders.  The soapberry tree is about ten years old.  It volunteered after a nice shade tree fell over.

Ten years makes a lot of winter soapberry mess falling on my patio.  On the upside, it's a lot of red admiral butterflies and hummingbirds, too.  But this is the first I remember of summer LGT mess:

Finally have a result of my pollen fairy dances.  It looks like a watermelon, not a zucchini.  Some rodent will probably bite into it soon.

I'll have to keep hoping for the limes.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Fewaffu

Resolution #7 : To refrain from refilling the birdfeeder.  Sorry birds, but the sight of a rat pigging out at the feeder is giving me nightmares.  And, no, I probably won't listen to "The Nutcracker" for quite awhile.

Fewaffu is today's security word, which sets off all sorts of inner pinballs.  It so sounds like a quicki-ethnic counter in a failing shopping mall's fast food court.  Part loofah and part Luby LuAnn platter perhaps.

Falafel became so popular that McDonald's now serves a "McFalafel" in some countries. I get falafel mixed up with injera, that spongy Ethiopian flatbread.


I written elsewhere about the year we had our Thanksgiving at a Waffle House in Oklahoma.  Ooh.  I fee waffu sorry for you.  This feline waffle is borrowed from link.

Resolution #8 : To actually read the tales of E. T. A Hoffmann for free [frewaffu] on my Kindle.  But for now just put the opera dvd in the player for Neil Shicoff and Bryn Terfel.


Resolution # 9 : Learn to make pie crust.  Apropos of nothing except maybe a potpie with pretty slits on the golden brown crust would be fewaffu satisfying on a chilly evening.

apropos of nothing

1. Without reference to anything.
2. Without any apparent reason or purpose.

Fewaffu it up to warf speed, Whoopi!


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

1/2 inch Plexiglass

"I Wonder As I Wander" is one of my favorite Christmas carols.  Its melody is haunting, and the lyrics slowly seeped into my brain this week.  It was a week of wandering and searching on spiritual, professional, and physical levels.  Tonight I am learning that the song comes from Appalachia.  


My wandering wonders are less momentous and will not haunt for long.  I won't remember them any longer than I can hold the memory of last evening's gorgeous misty ochre full moon rising.  Still, for just this moment I am amazed by the Schoolcraft College culinary students in Livonia, Michigan, creating the wonders of the architectural world in gingerbread and icing:


"St. Basil’s Cathedral," created by Matthew Fisher of Dearborn Heights, Morgan Massucci of Westland and Sheri Frader of Plymouth, won first place. Second place honors went to "Sydney Opera House," created by Anna Darwactor of Macomb.
  
So I wonder as I wander how one gets the gingerbread out of the oven and drapes it over curved forms while it is still soft to make the forms for the Sydney Opera Gingerbread House.  Then I have to ponder why the rats on NPR have so much more empathy than either my students or the members of Congress.  Maybe the Nutcracker Rat King that always gave me the willies just needed more chocolate chips.

For reasons I can't fathom, my father has begun eating like a horse AND talking. Two weeks ago we took him off Aricept, a prescription for maximizing mental clarity.  A visit with him is more of a wander than before. 


I didn't get to see Dad until 6:30 last evening, so he'd already had supper.  He was talkative, and asked me to change the t.v. channel.  Yikes! Yes!  It was a telethon about cleft palates.  


Dad said he'd watched a program about taxes... federal taxes...  "Nobody minds paying fair taxes, but everybody minds paying unfair taxes".  Yup!


Dad hadn't slept well the night before.  He was thinking about "the prices. Out in the country."  Oh, he's worrying what the farmers will get for their crops in Pierce County circa 1938. 

Then somehow Dad got sidetracked to the Plexiglas problem.  "Half-inch-thick Plexiglas protecting.... Protecting all the furniture...  45-degree angle out from the wall to the corner of the bed's footboard".  Dad says the Plexiglas moves for me when I walk around the bed.  Can't I see it?  


"Get me some paper", he says.  He folds a little piece of paper down to a 2-inch square.   He holds it in the Hail Mary pass position, but doesn't throw it.  He holds it in different places in front of him, and waves it some.  I tell him he is not in a protective bubble.  He says he knows, but without his usual note of exasperation.  I ask if he wants a ball to throw at the Plexiglas.  This is starting to match up with the times he has thrown his wadded diaper or a carton of milk at the wall.  He often acts like he is going to pass a football according to his aides.  I hunt around, we agree on a ball made from a pair of socks. Dad holds the sock ball, but never actually throws it.  His arm raised shows the skin just hanging from his bones.  Finally he asked me to put it away.  Quite an hour to wonder, ponder, mentally wander:

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky

When Mary birthed Jesus 'twas in a cow's stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all
But high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall
And the promise of ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing
Or all of God's Angels in heaven to sing
He surely could have it, 'cause he was the King

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky



As I've said before, I'm not a religious person.  This is my favorite prayer:


Let me be receptive.  Restore to me my capacity to wonder.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Marmot Day, 1978

Wish I could fit in those jeans, but so glad I'm not that clueless! Considering how uninformed we were on this backpacking trek in the San Juan National Forest above Durango, Colorado, I'm glad to have survived with only the occasional recurring lost marmot nightmare.

It's Greta Groundhog Day, a silly holiday I never forget. In my elementary school class, my friend Greta celebrated her birthday every Groundhog Day.

In Alaska, today is Marmot Day. My personal Marmot Day [pMD] was in the snowy mid-summer. It was the first real vacation with my law-student spouse, and our budget for the two weeks was slightly over $200. My mom slipped me another hundred in case something broke on our puke-yellow Chevy Nova.

In the photo I'm smiling because no bears ate me through the whole night while I tried to sleep on the crunchy vegetation and steep slope. As you may note, I can see my shadow. That meant eighteen more years of marriage!

We were somewhere in the vicinity of Kennebec Pass, and about to encounter an abandoned mine area populated by a couple hundred chirping live fuzzy hand-puppets. They were watching our every clumsy move across the snow, and singing a warning that we were way off the beaten trail. I figured these creatures were a Greek chorus of groundhogs warning of impending tragedy.

Only after I returned to civilization and my library did I identify these creatures as marmots. My students are having some Groundhog Day ID troubles, too. We made groundhog stick puppets today, and learned groundhog poems. We reinforced concepts of months, seasons, cloudy and sunny, hibernation, and shadows. We talked about tunnels and living underground. At the end of the day the kids waiting for their rides in car line said the puppets were prairie dogs and brown dogs. Oh, Greta! We really tried, but it just didn't sink in.

A topo map of preschool will lead to many abandoned marmot mines!

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

A burrito and a Barq's

Woke up this morning at five a.m. Sure, that's early, but it's much better than 3:38 a.m. I felt lucky to be so refreshed.

Been having wild dreams with and/or without giant rodents/ex-husband/airport rental car returns/Escher staircases/artificial resuscitation lately. For several nights, actually mornings, I've been waking at exactly 3:38. Get back to sleep and it's time to get up.



Started the pot of coffee at 5:15, and went to check my email. Great Hairy Pink Hostess Snowballs and other @!*~% cuss words! Internet Explorer couldn't find the server. Five twenty was a ridiculous time to be sitting under my computer desk unplugging and plugging cords on the back of the Hewlett Packard and using Professor Howard Hill's revolutionary Think System to restart the cable internet.

First time I've ever called my cable internet tech service number before six a.m., but I can report that "Josh" was very polite and helpful. Maybe he was in a time zone two mugs of coffee ahead of CDT, lucky dog. I'm pretty sure he wasn't in India.

"Josh," I said, "My internet is down. I'm afraid my entire neighborhood has been wiped out by aliens or a cataclysmic event while I was sleeping, but it's too dark to realize it yet."

"No, that's only in Chicago," Josh said.

"Huh??? Chicago was wiped out by aliens while I was sleeping??" Josh patiently explained about the flooding in Chicago disrupting cable internet service. I was embarrassed to flunk this current events quiz. I hoped I wouldn't be sent back to eighth grade.

My internet connection restored itself before Josh had a chance to intervene with his magical tech desk talents. He asked how else he might help me, but solving my life and telling me what I should be if I grow up are beyond his powers. We shared a good laugh and I felt lucky for my previous inconvenience. It was novel and fun to talk to another live human so early in the a.m. Hot dog, I feel lucky!

Headed out to the dumpster about 7:15 with the trash. Happened to glance at the Buick and the observation slowly percolated into my brain -- that front tire is really, REALLY low. How lucky! Most mornings I'm halfway to work in my mental fog before I even notice the gas gauge.

Glad to drive the two miles over to Discount Tire looking into a neon red rising sun in a pale lilac sky, just thrilled there's enough air so I'm not driving on the rim. I'm only slightly over the edge, but not on the rim. No time for breakfast or making the bed, no sack lunch prepared, no cash in my wallet! I've got an 8:45 class to teach. Jose removes a screw from the tire, and gets me back on the road only slightly late.

It's six blocks to my nearest branch bank, but a mile and a half as the crow flies to navigate old downtown Plano's one-way streets. The ATM is out of order. My luck is holding steady. Perhaps the ATM thinks it is in Chicago with Josh or with giant rodents on escalators. I have to write a check in the drive-through to get some lunch money. The teller is another friendly morning person. Maybe she is Josh's perky twin sister.

When I get to class, just a few minutes late but entirely breakfastless, my little students ask if we will make "flat tire art". Not today, but maybe soon! Maybe Discount Tire would have some tire tread pieces for print-making!

I feel lucky having so many little students fully engaged in our art project. My stomach growls. I feel lucky that I can go pick up "a burrito and a Barq's" for a very late breakfast. I'll never forget the first time I heard Mary Chapin Carpenter's song, "I Feel Lucky", on the radio of a rental car in Albuquerque driving to the Petroglyph Monument. No flat tire that day, just keys locked in a rental car by a giant rodent hanta virus then-spouse:


Well I woke up this morning,
stumbled out of my rack
I opened up the paper to the page in the back
It only took a minute for my finger to find
My daily dose of destiny, under my sign
My eyes just about popped out of my head
It said "the stars are stacked against you girl, get back in bed"

I feel lucky, I feel lucky, yeah
No Professor Doom gonna stand in my way
Mmmmm, I feel lucky today

Well I strolled down to the corner,
gave my numbers to the clerk
The pot's eleven million
so I called in sick to work
I bought a pack of Camels,
a burrito and a Barq's
Crossed against the light,
made a beeline for the park
The sky began to thunder,
wind began to moan
I heard a voice above me saying,
"girl, you better get back home"

But I feel lucky, oh oh oh, I feel lucky, yeah
No tropical depression gonna steal my sun away
Mmmmm, I feel lucky today

Now eleven million later,
I was sitting at the bar
I'd bought the house a double,
and the waitress a new car
Dwight Yoakam's in the corner,
trying to catch my eye
Lyle Lovett's right beside me
with his hand upon my thigh
The moral of this story,
it's simple but it's true
Hey the stars might lie,
but the numbers never do

I feel lucky, oh oh oh, I feel lucky, yeah
Hey Dwight, hey Lyle, boys, you don't have to fight
Hot dog, I'm feeling lucky tonight
I feel lucky, brrrrr, I feel lucky, yeah
Think I'll flip a coin, I'm a winner either way
Mmmmmm, I feel lucky today

L-RAT, the Bad Dreams Exam

Part One

1. Did you ever find, at an inopportune moment, that the sheet of dryer Bounce you didn't know was inside your clean slacks when you put them on in the morning had now worked its way down to the bottom of your pant leg and was hanging out looking ever so much like toilet paper? Oh, come on! Admit it.
2. How do you feel about rodents? (in 100 words or less)
3. It is the Super Bowl of the Animal Kingdom. The Rodents are playing the Reptiles. Who will you cheer on to victory and why? (100 word essay)

Part Two
Some children are traumatized by the death of Bambi's mother, the flying monkeys in the "Wizard of Oz", or pretty much the entire Disney "Pinocchio". Other children wait in dread for that scene in everybody's Christmas ballet favorite, "The Nutcracker", when THE MICE COME IN.

1. Do they ever get over it?
2. What would be a good age to introduce these classics to children, assuming that you actually like children?
3. What would be a good age to introduce these classics assuming you are the parent who has to get up in the night with children experiencing bad dreams?

Part Three

1. Did you see your first Indiana Jones movie before or after you read George Orwell's classic novel of totalitarianism, "1984"?
2. Did you actually read books in your high school English class, or did you watch videos?
3. Did you ever thank your English teachers for making you read those books that you swore were of absolutely no use in real life, but now come to mind far more often than Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"? It's not too late!
4. As a child, did you have a neighbor that you suspected of being the real farmer's wife who cut off the tails of the three blind mice?

Science Section

1. Why can't rats be more like lemmings? [Alas, lemmings don't really jump off cliffs.]
2. Where can a condominium complex rent a live rat snake? Herpe-Rent-All?
3. Will rat snakes also eat dachsunds and poodles if they get really hungry?
4. Is that a bad thing?
5. Do you remember when we had enough mental energy to worry about hantavirus back in the Nineties?
6. Should lab rats have to run through mazes, or should they get to drive in the HOV lane?

Arts and Literature

1. If the Pied Piper showed up in your neighborhood would you make him/her the Mayor?
2. Will Samuel Jackson star in the new film, "Rats on a Cruise", about a diabolical plot onboard a Disney cruise ship?
3. Would you put up with a few rats to sail with Captain Jack Sparrow?
4. What percentage of books in the children's room of your local public library are about rodents?*
5. Why did Jack put a sack of malt in his new-built house? What was he thinking??

Television Regulations
Many cable tv systems have a basic channel that is nothing but a camera on an aquarium of fish swimming around to music from a local radio station. This allows viewers to enjoy the sensation of being in their dentist's waiting room any hour of the day or night.

1. Should the FCC require cable systems to also offer a Habitrail hamster and gerbil channel with local radio traffic reports in the spirit of fair and balanced reporting?
2. Should there be a reality show based on Mother Goose rhymes? Seems like Simple Simon stepped right out of a Seinfeld episode.

So, there I was getting ready to board the airplane, but there was something inside the sleeve of my sweatshirt. I reached in to pull out the sheet of Bounce, but pulled out a mouse instead. There was more wiggling inside the sleeve near my elbow. It slowly worked its way to the cuff, revealing another mouse. I was unable to board the plane as I had to have the bites treated. Nevermind the part of the dream about my ex not allowing enough time to check in the rental car, speaking of rodents.
Since I was already sweaty after my dork walk through 2.8 miles of the neighborhood, I attacked the overgrown vegetation around my patio. The cannas, ivy, and myrtle groundcover have not been affected by our watering restrictions this dry summer. They grew as thick as ever, providing a shady, protected commute for rodents racing between one neighbor's dog food bowl and another's bird feeder. I haven't hand-watered out back since mid-July, but the cannas had more red blooms enticing more hummingbirds than usual. After the mice-in-the-sweatshirt dream, it was time to make the patio a more dangerous crossing for rodents. They can run, but they can't hide. Plus, it makes it easier to watch the lizards leaping from leaf to fence. Go, Reptiles, Go!
*Library Catalog Search Results
I used my public library keyword search with "juvenile" as the Keyword Anywhere, and the animal name as the Subject Keyword.
Juvenile + = 105373 titles (the maximum allowed by the catalog search)
Juvenile + Mice = 1207 titles
Juvenile + Mouse = 894
Juvenile + Rats = 173
Juvenile + Rat = 165
Juvenile + Hamster = 70
Juvenile + Gerbil = 23
Juvenile + Lemming = 6
Juvenile + Bears = 1721
Juvenile + Bear = 1497
Juvenile + Lion = 320
Juvenile + Fox = 440
Juvenile + Cat = 1518
Juvenile + Dog = 2108
Juvenile + Rabbit = 644
Juvenile + Rabbits = 894

R.I.P. cord

"The report of my death was an exaggeration."

Mark Twain
New York Journal, June 2, 1897

It is mid-September, always a depressing time in North Texas. Summer shows few signs of abating, with our humidity and temps creating heat index levels over one hundred degrees. Students are still wearing those *@#%! flip-flops and spaghetti strap tops. The hummingbirds are gone, but the rats are happy and healthy. I've spent half an hour trying to track down a television public service announcement I remember from childhood. It was a very dismal black and white video of a small child calling, "Here, kitty, kitty" to the rat in his crib.

I assumed that rats were something found only in folk tales and ghettos for most of my life. In recent years I learned that large rodents don't just flee the sinking ship. They live equally at home in our lower middle class condo complexes and in your hoity toity country clubs. Rats will be living large on Earth, along with cockroaches, many millennia after we humans have ceased choosing between paper and plastic. Still, that's not as personally depressing as the delay of corduroy weather, and the death of proofreading.

If it's too hot for spectators to wear corduroy pants to the high school football game, the season has started way too early. If the Dallas Symphony Orchestra website has spelling errors, again the season has started way too early. Shostakovich did not compose "Word War II" symphonies using Scrabble tiles. He wrote symphonies about World War II.

Most of the early childhood teachers and care-givers attending the Appelbaum continuing education workshop at the Mockingbird/I35 Radisson today were unmoved by the typographical errors in the workbook for the session. What is going on? Guardians of the arts and education can't put a professional product out there for we itty-bitty, mighty tired parents and customers?

I'm hoping the reported death of proofreading has been greatly exaggerated. Probably can't fit in my corduroy, anyway.

Pied Octopi

This is a many-tentacled* story, so please hold on tight to your pirate hat:

My job entails wearing many hats, but on the first day of each summer camp "wearing many hats" is my mandate. On these days I escape my art teacher persona to ham it up on stage and "let it all hang out" as we used to say in the Sixties. This is not the right moment for me to get distracted by idioms involving the word hang, but if you've got the time, this is the place. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.



So after I skipped around the stage wearing Little Red's hood and carrying a basket of goodies, I changed to the rat hat. The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a very scary story. It ranks right up their with the mice in "The Nutcracker" and the flying monkeys in Oz. "Does anyone know what pied means?" Yes! Yes! I do! I do! One student started telling us the digits, 3.14159265358979323846. No, not that pi. We pantomime throwing a clown cream pie in his face.

Did Harold ever draw a quiche with his purple crayon? What about a Frito pie? Harold did draw the nine kinds of pie that he liked best? And what about Old King Cole with the four and twenty blackbirds?


We are still looking for the meaning of pied. I'm pleased to learn about the Heckle and Jeckle magpie connection.

pied 1382, as if it were the pp. of a verb form of M.E. noun pie "magpie" (see pie (2)), in ref. to the bird's black and white plumage. Earliest use is in reference to the pyed freres, an order of friars who wore black and white. Also in pied piper (1845, in Browning's poem based on the Ger. legend; used allusively from 1942).

pie (1) "pastry," 1303, from M.L. pie "meat or fish enclosed in pastry," perhaps related to M.L. pia "pie, pastry," also possibly connected with pica "magpie" (see pie (2)) on notion of the bird's habit of collecting miscellaneous objects. Not known outside Eng., except Gaelic pighe, which is from Eng. In the Middle Ages, a pie had many ingredients, a pastry but one. Fruit pies began to appear c.1600. Fig. sense of "something easy" is from 1889. Pie-eyed "drunk" is from 1904. Phrase pie in the sky is 1911, from Joe Hill's Wobbly parody of hymns. Pieman is not attested earlier than the nursery rhyme "Simple Simon" (c.1820).

pie (2) "magpie," c.1250, from O.Fr. pie (13c.), from L. pica "magpie," related to picus "woodpecker," Umbrian peica "the magpie," Skt. pikah "Indian cuckoo," O.N. spætr, Ger. Specht "woodpecker" (see magpie).

pie (3) printers' slang for "a mass of type jumbled together" (also pi, pye), 1659, perhaps from pie (1) on notion of a "medley," or pie (2) (see pica).

And so, so, so, so..."pied" means multi-colored.

Went to see Johnny Depp and OrlandoBloom in "Pirates of the Caribbean--Dead Man's Chest" yesterday. I'm fond of pirates, but not of nightmares. How many children will have octopus nightmares after watching the movie's Davy Jones?

One of the best ways to get over nightmares is to learn about the subject. An octopus is a fascinating, curious, smart creature, although difficult to pluralize. I have two books I love to share with elementary students, Karen Wallace's Gentle Giant Octopus, and the Smithsonian book, Octopus' Den.



octopus
1758, genus name of a type of eight-armed cephalopod mollusks, from Gk. oktopous "eight-footed," from okto "eight" + pous "foot." Proper plural is octopodes, though octopuses probably works better in English. Octopi is from mistaken assumption that -us is the L. noun ending that takes -i in plural.


*And now for a little song from Nat King Cole, who may or may not have liked pie.

Love is a many-splendored thing,
It's the April rose that only grows in the early spring,
Love is nature's way of giving a reason to be living,
The golden crown that makes a man a king.
Once on a high and windy hill,
In the morning mist two lovers kissed and the world stood still,
Then your fingers touched my silent heart and taught it how to sing,
Yes, true love's a many-splendored thing.

Art Varmint

"Miz Nancy," my serious seven-year-old student says in a slightly nervous whisper, "did you know there is something big, black, and furry under the paint shelf, AND IT'S MOVING?" Holy Orwellian moly! Please don't let it be a rat!!! Of course, it's not a rat, but what if it is a tarantula?

The student and I trade knowing looks. We've got to sneak up on the big, black, furry thing without alarming the rest of the class. My hot glue gun is of no use at this range, so I slide it back into my holster. We have to rely on our own grit and determination, as the telegraph wires have been cut. Armed with just a broom, I shut one eye tight, and get down on one knee. Geez, Louise! That furry moving thing is one big scary dusty blue feather blown about by the air conditioner. What a relief. I sweep it into the dustpan. The student breathes a sigh of relief. We wordlessly agree not to notify the press corps.

"Varmint" seems to be a variant of "vermin", not to be confused with "victuals" or "vittles". In my classroom it's not a good idea to eat anything that's been on the rug!

Winning word for the week

Comanical is a preschooler word used to describe the giant mechanical rat and other animals in the automated Chuck E. Cheese pizza show. It perfectly captures the maniacal quality of the allegedly comic or child-friendly mechanical characters.

My first visit to a ShowBiz Pizza Place, the early name for a Chuck E. Cheese's, was before I had kids. My friend loved to take her two preschoolers there for lunch, and I was just along for the ride. What a terrific place! First you could overstimulate the kiddies on miniature carnival rides with flashing lights until they were queasy or crabby, then order some bad pizza and watery pop. Take your tray into the darkened Show Room where your shoes stuck to the carpet. Park the youngsters in their booster chairs just in time for a "show" of lifesize animatronics with a rockabilly bear and a nightmare-inducing cheerleader mouse. Take two Excedrin, bundle the kids into their snowsuits, and fasten them into their carseats. Pull out of the parking lot onto Dodge Street, and the chain-reaction barfing begins. The night terrors won't start for a couple nights.

Received a videocassette in the mail when my spouse's nephew was born. Ack. It was a video of his delivery! Thank you so much for sharing.

Received another videocassette a year later. A birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's for a one year-old freaked out by the comanical rat, the blaring music, and an uncomfortably loaded diaper, and a large collection of aunts and uncles forced to eat bad pizza and Excedrin.

I used to worry about the part in the black and white televised Nutcracker ballet "where the mice come in". It wasn't as scary as the Oz flying monkeys, but very worrisome when I was a preschooler. I would have to really squint, or even leave the room, when the mice came in. The cheerleading Mitzi Mozzarella mechanical mouse was way scarier, and I was in my late twenties by then!

This is just to let my sons know that if they ever get married and procreate, I would prefer that they not celebrate special occasions at Chuck E. Cheese's. Let's just say this future grandma would rather watch a delivery room video while have dental work done in the downtown Greyhound bus terminal than ever see the comanicals again.

Huzzah!

Five weeks down, five to go on summer camps. Today we had our Castle Faire, an annual event during Knight's Quest camp. We turn the theatre into a medieval faire with booths selling food, swords, horses, and jewelry for a few hours. There's a tent and crystal disco ball for the fortune-teller. The kids and staff all dress up in costumes. The king welcomes everyone to the faire. We let kids with July birthdays be the kings and queens. The oldest kids perform an improv drama. The middle kids dance. Everyone has play money to purchase things, and we all go around bowing to each other. The little kids think the faire is the most fun since Halloween. We have bread and cheese, Pepperidge Farms Goldfish just caught fresh from the moat, dried fruits, and jerky. Everyone suspends disbelief for half an hour. Sometimes a kid goes crazy for prunes, and we have to warn his mom or nanny. Today I got to be a ragged lame hunchbacked beggar with lice, fleas, and rheumy eyes. I collected a lot of alms and a few rodents from the Pied Piper. It was a splendid faire!

Click on the link to Itty Bitty Art Projects to see how our crowns and castles are going.

Rodent obits

On Christmas Day there was an obituary in the DMN with a photo of a woman wearing Mouseketeer ears. I loved the woman, even though she had been an Avon representative. It seemed to me she had anticipated the many formalities after her death as a whole lot of Mickey Mouse. She would be in Cosmic Disney World, and the rest of us would still be reading the local newspaper before lining the bottom of the birdcage!

I won't be running an obit for my computer mouse. It decided to visit the neon exercise wheel in the sky today at an inconvenient moment while I was working on my year-end inventory. My tech support sons were unable to revive the mouse with CPR or artificial respiration. We bargained for its soul with edam, gouda, jalapena jack, brie, havarti dill, swiss, and NY cheddar. Spells and incantations to the Device Manager and Installation Wizard were also unsuccessful. Right now I'm borrowing a cordless mouse (thanks to the Farmer's Wife Who Never Saw Such a Sight In Her Life).

This year I suffered from delusions of spreadsheet grandeur after learning to make rows and columns, and enter data (sort of). Still can't make the data do any tricks. The data is obviously not as smart as my aquarium fish. The fish at least know that they are likely to be fed when their light is turned on. The data refuses to do arithmetic gymnastics even though I have established the range in the field that needs to be added. =SUM(bad:headache). Bringing in a descendant consultant didn't help. Sending a history major to help an artist is the proverbial blind leading the blind. At least Jeff could supply colorful oaths from several epochs to the battle. I could only add dreamland welding equipment.

And now I am wondering about a commemorative Rosie the Riveter hamster collector's edition...

Revenge of the Sugar Plum Fairy

When I was little I was terrified of the Rat King in the Nutcracker. Every year the black and white t.v. ballet special would be aired, probably brought to us by Kraft or Chevrolet. Every year I would watch through squinted eyes while asking, "Is this where the mice come in?" It was nearly as bad as the Oz flying monkeys.

Dreamt last night I was teaching my preschoolers in one of those morphing settings, part parlor and part warehouse. Very realistic mice were scurrying out from behind furniture, crates, and plaster molding. [Who ya gonna call?] There I was in my nightgown fighting off rodents with a blow torch. I felt like Carrie Fisher in the "Blues Brothers" stuck in a mousy early Tetris version. Clara needs those nice young men in their clean white coats...

I will have to abandon my hamster designer fashion collection due to Post Rodent Stress Disorder and Mousehole Tunnel Syndrome. Can I claim the loss as a medical expense?

If any creatures are stirring, nuke 'em.