Who ya gonna call?

Home from work. Find myself phoneless. Panic kicks in, narrowing the sidewalk for reason.

Not in the car, under the seat, down in the crevice.

Not in the trunk, but glad my "new" car has a light in the trunk.

Not in my purse.  Dump everything out.  Try again. Still not in my purse, or the car, or the trunk.

Would anyone still be at work? Would they check email before leaving?

That's the trouble with living alone with just a cellphone.  No way to call myself!

Where did I go today? Rode in Janie's car. She lives way out in the country, and I won't see her for five days. Went to Fadi's for lunch, and sat in that goofy booth. Too tall cushion, too close to the pillar. Easy place for a phone to fall out, but be sure to get the cauliflower*.

Loaded stuff into the trunk--a big bag of pinecones.  Phone on the street where I parked?

Not hyperventilating, but getting close.  Go check the mail kiosk and near the recycling cart. It is NOT yet time for dumpster diving!

Did I flush it? Is it on vibrate? Is it out of juice? We're talking a disaster of Biblical proportions.

The last paranormal removal specialists at work received the email, and called my number. They wandered the library listening, listening.

How do I spell relief? G-H-O-S-T-B-U-S-T-E-R-S! Deep down behind a cushion in the back office a little blue phone was playing that song. The phone was found, and even brought to my condo.





I just wanna thank Egon, Ray, Venkman, and Zeddemore, plus Sharon and Pam. And since I can't figure out how to change it, my ringtone will probably remain the Ghostbusters theme song forever. And yes, I still miss those old card catalogs. Also the funny little Ghostbusters who lived in my house.

*Cauliflower--Stewed in its own juices with lemon juice and spices, then fried with zero trans fat oil. 

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Look, it's going to bubbles!

The ancient history of audio-visual instruction 

Once upon a time, boys and girls, just after God said "Let there be light" and there was light, the filmstrip projector came to school. It sat on top of two fat dictionaries on a desk pulled into the middle of an aisle.  Beside it on the desk sat a can holding a roll of film and knowledge, and a little easy-reader booklet.

What is film, Ms Nancy?...Never mind. We'll just skip over this part.*

In the Late Cretaceous, the filmstrip was accompanied by a 45 rpm recording with beeps in the narration indicating when the filmstrip should be advanced to the next black and white image. The beeps caused the student deputized to operate the projector to instantly forget which direction was forward and which was back. [This is similar to the nursing home phenomenon of elderly patients with tv remote controls.]

Why were film strips important?  Because film strips promoted napping at school. Napping is good.(1)

Nebraska was one of the first states to begin educational broadcasting. All the students would walk in two straight lines with their hands clasped behind their backs down the hall to the Eastridge Elementary School library, then sit on the cork-tile floor to watch Dolores Dudley read classic picture books like Rex Parkin's The Red Carpet, and Wanda Gag's Millions of Cats on the school's lone black and white television.  Mrs. Dudley was at the peak of her powers with Marcia Brown's Stone Soup. (2)

That's when I first wanted to be a storytime lady when I grew up. 

Creating bulletin boards was a competitive sport for elementary school teachers. An opaque projector enabled teachers to enlarge a student drawing on a big swath of butcher paper.  Then kiddies could paint the big image with runny powdered tempera paint mixed up in metal orange juice cans. (3)

Every December all the Eastridge students would file into the auditorium to watch a film about the composing of "Silent Night".  The film was quite blue, with people crunching around in the snow.  The highlight of this annual event was the inevitable breaking, splicing, and rethreading of the film into the projector.  We kids would be all hyped up on holiday anticipation, and be anything but silent.

At Millard Lefler Junior High teachers began using overhead projectors.  Students missed the chances to make dusty messes with the chalk erasers.  At least we still got to sniff ditto papers. And wouldn't The Sniffing Dittos be a good name for an oldies cover band?

In Speech class we were allowed to use a tape recorder for the group project "radio broadcast". The technological biggie was the foreign language lab. Each student sat in a carrell that looked like a prison visitation booth and put on headphones. While Srta. Diaz allegedly eavesdropped on our performances, we repeated phrases like

 I would like the chocolate cake.  Yo quisiera el pastel de chocolate.

High school brought new AV technology. Learning to drive meant sitting in a simulator watching films of roads and turning the steering wheel.  Each simulator looked like a cross between an opaque projector and an immovable carnival bumper car.  Crazy that twenty years later my young sons were"flying" simulated dogfights on our computer games with realistic graphics.

Ah, college! Dark lecture halls. Watching art history slide shows. Remember, napping is good. To this day I don't use the exhibit audio tours at art museums. It would be so embarrassing to fall asleep and start snoring and drooling...



Fast forward FF. I still can't cope with the tv remote, but I'm making computer slideshows for my young art students. Trying to connect with kids who can scroll on an iPhone before they can wipe and flush. Trying to connect the raccoon's tail without too many technical diffooooculties.

What do my students like best? Look, Ms. Nancy.  It's going to bubbles!

Footnotes

(1)  Concurrent technology available in homes included single view handheld slide projectors, and tray or carousel slide projectors for subjecting the neighbors to long evenings reviewing your tent-camping trip to Yellowstone. Comic relief came in the form of slides loaded upside down or backwards.

(2) We also watched Mercury and Gemini blast-offs in the library.

(3) The View-Master was a concurrent "educational slideshow".  Children could click through images of Our Nation's Capitol including Jackie Kennedy's White House renovations, Disney's Peter Pan, and Yellowstone geysers.

*Judge Maxwell: I think I want to skip over this part, too. 
Howard: That night, I went back to my room and she was in the bath. 
Judge Maxwell: Who was there? No, don't tell me, just go on. 
Howard: When Eunice walked in and the drapes caught fire, everything burned. They asked me to leave. I really don't blame them. 
Judge Maxwell: Good boy. Is there more? 
Howard: Sure. 
Judge Maxwell: There's more. 



© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Curse of the Spider Woman*

Don't look at me even through squinted eyes. I am toxic. I am Typhoid Mama. No inanimate object is safe. Some animate ones behave too inanimately. It's been bad voodoo all over the place.

So far just since the rodents and the rat snake on the patio:

• Stove control panel died.
• Oven died.
• Microsoft support for Windows Home Premium operating system evaporated.
• Preschoolers took poopy pants to a whole new level.
• Brakes on Buick started grabbing and squawking.
• New electric range is delivered, but the old one is wired directly into the condo electrical system and giant delivery dudes are not authorized to remove old or install new range.
• Canon printer pooped out.
• Preschool pet rabbit plays possum while lead teacher is away on jury duty.
• Giant spider attacked library.

On the upside:

•  I finally got a photo of a funnel web spider.
• The eleven-year-old preschool rabbit revived.
• The lead teacher was not picked for a jury even though she was looking forward to being sequestered.
• The brake work was minor.
• I like Windows 7 and the new Canon printer.
• It's finally autumn.
• The condo mailboxes in the kiosk have been replaced after a year of broken locks and doors.

*Kiss of the Spider Woman was a haunting movie with William Hurt, Raul Julia, and Sonia Braga. Hurt won the 1985 Best Actor Oscar for his performance which did not involve mailboxes or rabbits as far as I can recall.

Once I had an evil eye charm given to me by an elderly traveling coworker.  Alas, I added the charm to a wire sculpture. The old blue eyes mystery of the Florida swordfish reminded me. I never had one of those creepy rabbit's foot key chains, thank heaven. I'm horrified to find they are still "harvested" and sold, even on Amazon.  

And so I close another crazed rant to go reweave my web.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Microsoft's crab legs payback

Perhaps I enjoyed Maria Semple's skewering of Microsoft corporate culture too much.  I liked her book on facebook, so I should have known there would be technological hell to pay.  Where'd You Go, Bernadette is great fun, a romp narrated by Bee Branch, a tween girl as bright as Paloma Josse in The Elegance of the Hedgehog, but perhaps not as deep. 

Almost as soon as I "liked" the novel for its hilarious TED Talk parody, I got C80003F9 error codes on my failures to retrieve Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows updates. Coincidence, maybe. Aggravating, definitely. No amount of shutting down and reloading my old Windows Vista Home Premium could remove the curse. Now I've purchased and downloaded Windows 7 to replace my unsupported operating system. Are you happy yet, Microsoft?

Obstacles placed on my home computer turf are one thing, but when the Microsoft revenge tracked me to the grocery store things got ugly. The young male cashier did not know the code for those last two ears of corn on the cob of the season, sixty-nine cents each. Since he was searching for "husks" he couldn't find "ears". The other cashiers hollered codes at him.  When he entered the codes, they were rejected.  Same thing happened for the bunch of radishes. How many bunches? 

1     1 is what the teen entered, but that 1 added a $9.74 charge for crab legs to my bill.  Attempts to remove the crab legs added more and more crab legs.  This was going to be the most luxurious false gourmet grocery bill ever! Fifteen minutes, many more crab legs, and a puzzled store manager later, we voided the entire transaction and started over. Went home to make sloppy joes, not crab legs, for supper. Happy yet? At least we now know the product PLU for crab legs is 1.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

askFat 17

I am unable to convince Blogger Comments that I am not a robot.  Therefore, I have decided to become a robot.  Blogger suggested a splendid robot name:

Should a PIN be necessary to activate, enter Hi2sB0yElr0y.

Danger Bifocal Robinson admin sys bop flop squint.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Good fences make good neighbors. Bad cursors make for cussing.

Survival under one roof in a long marriage, sharing a condo with teen sons, having a joint checking account or a shared minutes cellphone plan requires finding basic areas of agreement, and fencing known issues of disagreement outside the playing field.  The same is true for business partnerships, and that most dangerous zone of the shared computer.

To get along persons in any partnership must agree, or else agree to disagree and avoid the topics of

• Religion
• Politics
• Tidiness standards
• Vegetarianism vs. grilling big hunks o' beef
• Paper vs. plastic
• Cat or dog
• Recycling vs. being an irresponsible blight upon Mother Earth
• Manual vs. automatic transmission
• Apple vs. PC
• Planning ahead vs. frolicking frivolously in the present
• Thanksgiving at my parents'/Christmas at your parents'
• Talk radio vs. NPR
• Whether children can wear cowperson boots with Hawaiian print shorts
• Being perky before coffee vs. staying wisely silent until coffee kicks in

The choice of a screensaver and desktop theme should be right up there with the worst partnership/buddy breakers. An office passive-aggressive power struggle between fishy themes with seashell cursors for one, and falling autumn leaf screensavers and acorn pointers for two is threatening to maim the small business where I work.

© 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

Back mostly

Back on the solid ground of North Texas.  Reentry has been difficult, but the cool temperature and rain showers are helping my outlook.

Of course it doesn't help that my email has changed to Outlook.com.  For sixteen years my Hotmail account worked  JUST FINE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. 







Please do not fuss with things that waddle along splendidly, OR, if it ain't broken don't fix it! This goose is waddling splendidly in Hoboken, New Jersey. 


© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Robots, babies, and proof

What is real?  What has value? What is pre-wired? What is learned? What is hacked? Where are the authorities? Who decides what's authentic? What requires bifocals? ... Hearning aids?

When we pull the cloth out from under the silver and china why is there no table?

I'm on a non-fiction reading kick.  This week I'm tackling Modris Eksteins's Solar Dance, and finding much for rumination. Could be, though, the grass is AstroTurf.  Or the grass could be half-empty. Or the cow might have a stomach porthole:

 In Modris Eksteins’s hands, the interlocking stories of Vincent van Gogh and art dealer Otto Wacker reveal the origins of the fundamental uncertainty that is the hallmark of the modern era.

Wacker's forged Van Goghs did much to popularize the artist's work, and to drive the prices skyward--the faux promoting the genuine. We live in a world of designer knock-offs and bootlegs, where the genuine promote the faux. As happened at Wacker's trial and appeal, the testimony of "experts" got so convoluted it seemed the faux genuine was promoting the genuine faux.  Say, is that a real fake Rolex?

 Behind our daily life skitters a  backdrop of doubt.  We need to check for security updates and run scans.  Our suspicious outlook could be our only salvation.

This morning I listened to an NPR segment about people teaching a robotic baby to talk.  This evening I'm unable to convince the same online story that I am not a robot myself.  I flunked two visual robot tests, then attempted my first ever audio robot challenge. Ouch.  I did much worse sorting and typing the audio robot quiz words amidst the babble. I'm pretty sure I got "fried egg", "Sunday", "rectangle", and "scissors", but that was inadequate.

Coworkers and friends send me email links in the middle of the night. Don't they have to be at work at 8:30?  Why are they up so late? Didn't I just see them yesterday? How could they have already lost their passports and need me to wire them money? Their addresses are not their own.

And you, too. You aren't real. Symantec said so, so it must be so. You must be very popular! Norton will not let me into any of your blogs. Maybe it's a fake Norton protecting me from the real McCoy.

Fraudulent Web Page Blocked You attempted to access: http://kathleenkirkpoetry.blogspot.com/ This web page is a known fraudulent web page. It is recommended that you do NOT visit this page. For your protection, this web page has been blocked. Visit Symantec to learn more about phishing and internet security.  Well, it is Sunday morning now. The world is washed clean. Your web pages are no longer fraudulent. The experts have spoken.  And they said, "Danger, Will Robinson!" © 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Worm poetry with professional input

Between Buds and corn

on the cob in the fridge three

nightcrawler boxes

One nightcrawler box on the counter.

Okay, sort of hokey haiku, but hey, it's National Poetry Month and I'm running out of time.  Danced the worm Hokey Pokey with 4-5 year olds at my worm show Thursday morning.  

This post has had an edit thanks to input from Kathleen who said...

I love the nightcrawler boxes in the fridge!!

Kathleen did not say the other hokey haiku did not work, but it didn't take long after reading her comment to realize they did not.  That's why she is a real live professional poet and I am a worm lady.  Alas.

Never got around to grilling the corn last night after talking to the probate attorney and trying to understand what is going on with my registered domain name.*  You will just have to envision the cornsilk in the plastic grocery bag.  And the Buds are gone.  Today I took the three bait boxes to school and the preschoolers released the nightcrawlers into our garden.  Twenty-five of twenty-six students were brave enough to hold a worm.  The worms were pleased to get out of the boxes and into perfect worm weather--dark, humid, cool with rain approaching.  They put on a splendid movement and tunneling exhibition for the children. 

Then we found this tiny moth on the lock to the playground toy chest:.  A few kids liked the sound of "lock moth" so they stomped and staggered around chanting

lock moth

lock moth

lock moth

lock moth

lock moth

Just glad they didn't form a conga line.

lock moth lock moth LOCK MOTH!

lock moth lock moth LOCK MOTH!

During the Q&A at the worm show a mom asked if there were really one thousand red wigglers in a pound.  Yup. Then a pre-K teacher asked how I separate my worms from the humus they have made so I can use that good dirt.  I said on a Friday evening after a really rough week in the preschool I go home and sit on my laundry room floor with my worm bin and I pull the worms out, count them, and put them into a different bin.  After about five hundred worms I feel much better.  Blood pressure and respiration normal.  The earth even seems to be spinning properly on its axis.

1 red wiggler 

2 red wigglers 3 red wigglers 

4 red wigglers 5 red wigglers 6 red wigglers

*The estate doesn't have a domain name.  These are separate issues, although they are both opened cans of worms.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Cannot blog. Must watch dog.

Spring break is ending, taking no consideration of my need for another two+ weeks.  Why can't years or months or weeks leap on demand? When I am in charge of the world this will be a top priority.

Worked through a lot of estate stuff, and got rid of enough piles of papers I can see my carpet all around the computer desk. The good news is when  a financial institution says it can't tell you who the beneficiary is, "but it is not YOU", it doesn't necessarily mean your father sired another family out in Utah. The bad news is it will take a long time to untangle this stuff.

Having a grandbaby is very exciting, but still feels long-distance.  I'm warming to the name "Grancy", but haven't sprung it on the new daddy yet.

In the strange world of technology I've been able to watch my grand doggy via webcam during his stay at the kennel. He's had wonderful opportunities for socializing, play, and exercise. There have been adjustment issues including nervous peeing incidents, jumping on caregivers, trying to hump playmates, unwanted naptimes, and occasional loneliness.  It is ever so much like my preschool class except dogs can't pick their noses, and there's a little less emphasis on academics! I have to wonder how the relationships between teachers and parents would change if our charges were on a webcam twelve hours a day.

And now the good economic news:

• I don't have to go live in a box under a freeway access ramp again this week.

• The price for twenty-four night-crawlers at Academy Sports is still $3.89, exactly the same as last summer.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Not Mission Impossible, nor quick as a bunny

ALL I KNOW IS I KNOW NOTHING.  What I learned about downloading an eBook from my public library to my Kindle:

DO NOT BE IN A HURRY.  


The delivery of library eBooks is not through the miracles of the 3g Whispernet.  That is the instantaneous way I have obtained Kindle books while sitting in LaGuardia and Midway terminals during delays. 




KNOW THYSELF: 


I needed my library patron number and PIN, plus my Amazon account ID and password.  I needed patience, perseverance, and intestinal fortitude!  

The delivery of library eBooks selected from Overdrive at my library's website is via Wi-Fi.  Early Kindles like mine don't have Wi-Fi access because they are not wearing Mr. Spock's ears.  That means when Overdrive takes me from the checkout to Amazon's Public Library Kindle site, I have to read all the instructions.  This is usually against my religion, so let me say it again:


READ ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THE SCREEN.


Then I click on the "Manage My Kindle" tab to work through the process of downloading the eBook to my computer and transferring it to my Kindle by way of a USB connection.  This is not pretty.  I have some USB port problems so it took awhile to get my computer to find a driver for my Kindle.  


So, I was back to the Beatles...I've got a driver and that's a start.  Then it is a matter of using Windows to see the files on my Kindle and drag my eBook downloads to the Kindle documents file.  Now that I have them downloaded, I kinda wish I'd selected some books I actually cared to read!  My efforts were as a guinea pig/crash test dummy for the library, and I had the smarts for the part.


Since I don't actually want to read either the owner's manual for my brain or Calvin Trillin, I found that I could return the eBooks to my library from Amazon's "Manage My Kindle" page by clicking on the "Actions" button.  If I don't return the eBooks within fourteen days, they will self-destruct, with no overdue fines.

...As always, should you or any of your IM force be caught or killed, the Librarian will disavow any knowledge of your actions. Good luck, Jim. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. 

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Morticia and Gomez fix computers

At the library where I work on Saturdays we are having lots of computer difficulties.  The librarian put up a new sign on all the broken computers that says

IT is working

on a solution...

Nobody reads further down the sign.  Everybody tries to log onto the broken computers thinking "It is working" when really "I. T. is working on a solution".  Alas, I. T. is not working very fast.

So, order a plastic hula skirt from Oriental Trading Company.  Gather the waist tight.  Wear the skirt over your head.  Add a hat and dark ZZTop glasses to become Cousin Itt.  Snap your fingers. 

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Predictive text = more evidence of the apocalypse OR potatoes au gratin

My friend in the hospital after double bypass heart surgery is sending messages via some dumb smart electronic device.  The messages pop up in my Hotmail, and make very little sense.  When I write asking about french toast for breakfast, his reply is about irises.  When I mention those fetching backless hospital gowns, I get back "The gown and precipitous  are going home with me.."  What is going on?


Have Holmes and Moriarty wrestled on the brink of the Reichenbachless Hospital Gown Falls?  Shouldn't modern technology clarify communication?   My backless friend just wants to take his souvenir pee cup home from the hospital to have it bronzed, and he is willing to pay the out-of-network/out-of-pocket price for this relic.  Why is technology pushing him over the cliff?

Come on baby, do the disambiguation with me, but not in your hospital gown.





© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

If one of those updates should happen to fall

There'll be 98 bottles of beer on the wall.  Take one down and pass it around, McAfee updates follow Microsoft install.

It's a summer bus ride to fun time camp!  I finally got a new router after the old D-Link fried in a lightning storm.  The netbook computer Dad unknowingly purchased for me to manage his financial affairs can now return to service after six months idleness.  But first there will be a tortuous period of long-delayed automatic updates, much like being stuck on a bus to Camp Kiwanis with the singing Camp Fire Girls, to be followed by a long afternoon of kids playing Marco-Polo at the neighborhood swim pool.

installing update 21 of 53

Happy birthday wishes to Julie B and Janice.

Now we're installing Internet Explorer 9, we take 8 down and pass it around.  Getting late.  I may be on the high school church choir trip with those tenors smoking cherry cigars.

A car and a bus set out at 2 p.m. from the same point, headed in the same direction. The average speed of the car is 30 mph slower than twice the speed of the bus. In two hours, the car is 20 miles ahead of the bus and your updates are still downloading.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

gress happens

Commenting on a hedgehog blog, I was forced to type a security word:

gress

Gress seems to come from gradi to go, not to be confused with
Frass--that stuff when caterpillars go poop,
or Gross--when a student pees all over the restroom floor.

Digress means to go astray, which is actually what this small student does whenever she uses the restroom.  Often she needs dry clothes to regress to a previous state.

Dad is gressing to a different state.  I arrived about six p.m. to find he had pushed his supper tray away and onto himself, his bed, and the floor. Again.  He was wearing tomato soup and milk way down between his widdle toes.  This particular grinch was not amused to deal with this gradoo.  [See Urban Dictionary  ] Sadly, Dad was able to say he does not have the energy to eat.

Pate de foie gras is a paste made from goose liver, usually with truffles.  I do not smash goose liver, with or without truffles.  I smash rodents and other vermin with a  2" x 10" board in a long night of exhausting dreams. Wake up with very sore arms and shoulders after being a slumber lumber liquidator!  Maybe the dream is telling me I need a mattress with better lumbar support ... or a new blender.

It is Sunday.  Time to get engrossed in a good book, Feathers:  The Evolution of a Natural Miracle, by Thor Hansen.  Time for brunch with a friend, and making fresh nectar for the hummingbird feeder.  I'll watch the US women vs. Japan while Dad naps, and work on my saves when he pushes his dinner tray. Time to smile about the Woolly Mammoth's new job and plans to come visit his old mom.  And time, of course, to pay bills.  It won't be pate, but I'm going to make a cream cheese spread with garlic, walnuts, dill, and black olives.

My old red dictionary has gressorial adj. Zoology.  Adapted for walking or having legs adapted for walking. [New Latin gressorius, from gressor, one that walks, from Latin gradi (past participle gressus), to step, go.  See ghredh-


AGGRESS, CONGRESS, DEGRESSION, DIGRESS, EGRESS, -GRADE, GRESSORIAL, INGRESS, PROGRESS, REGRESS, RETROGRESS, SALTIGRADE, TRANSGRESS...GRADE, DEGRADE, DEGREE, RETROGRADE.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

As we have done before

Let's stare in and out with Windows.  Those barbarians @ Microsoft have decided this would be a nice evening to download, upload, and shake it all about.  Configure me!  Install me!  Restart me!  Was it good for you, too?

During this inconvenient and unslip-slidy technology encounter, my gaze strayed to the patio beyond the sliding glass door.  The red cannas are blooming, but all strangely contorted like rheumatoid arthritic joints.  A hummingbird seemed glad to sip a sideways flower anyway.

Go in and out the window,

Go in and out the window,

As we have done before.

The lizards on the fence were colored stressed browns, so I sprayed water on leaves for them to drink.  The hot wind was a blast each time I went outside.  At least the mockingbird didn't get in through this window to peck the ripening tomatoes!  

No tomatoes for you Bill Gates!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

"That bad man will come and get us"

We have nothing to fear but fax machines and finger fumbles that wipe out lengthy blog drafts.  And miller moths flying up the legs of our bell-bottom pants making us lose control of our 1961 Plymouth Sport Fury.  The evaporated verbose entry began with the bell-bottoms and the proclamation about the "bad man" by a three year old student.  We were out for a little nature walk just listening to birds, feeling the wind on our skin, seeing squirrels in the trees, and noticing the guy in the parking lot talking on his cellphone.  My what big eyes he had.  My what big teeth and a coffee mug.  My what big ears and a cigarette, and that same navy striped knit shirt he wears any day when he's not meeting clients.

Fear.

Three year olds are afraid of many things.  This is a countdown of things that send them into a mass tizzy:

1. thunder
2. ants
3. garbage trucks
4. loud toilets
5. fresh fruit
6. sirens
7. spiders
8. bees
9. fire trucks
10. power failures
11. new vegetables
12. foods touching each other
13. paint on hands
14. strangers
15. shots

Once upon a time I was frightened of big cities, not having ever visited one.  I called my fear "metrophobia".  On my first trip to Washington, D.C. I overcame much of that fear by learning to negotiate the Metro transit system.  Twenty-five years later I still love the DC subway system except for the out-of-service escalators..

We have nothing to fear but faxing itself.  FDR did not say that, but it is still true.  My metrophobia is mostly gone, but I'm holding firm to faxophobia.  There are things in this world that are really scary--hunger, abuse, exploitation, lack of clean water, war, gang violence, long-term unemployment.  I was going to make jokes about credit card debt, termite swarms, old age, and other things that will come and get us.

I don't know whether to read an old Nancy Drew mystery with a black widow spider, or to watch the quicksand scene from Lawrence of Arabia.  It is thundering.  Angels are bowling.  Christian soldiers are marching onward.  Mothers are serving brussels sprouts to innocent preschoolers.  Moths are just waiting for you to flick on the bathroom light in the middle of the night.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Catching the bus to Pierce

Got a call early this morning informing me Dad had crawled out of bed onto the floor.  No injuries, thank heaven.  He seemed about the same when I got over to Life Care, except his eyes were only half open. 

Dad's first question was if his mother still had a telephone.  I didn't tell him Halma died close to thirty years ago.  He was worried she wouldn't know he'd be arriving on the bus.  He didn't think he had any clothes or shoes that fit, and no money for a haircut.  Dad did not want to arrive in Pierce without a nice haircut.

I was worrying about Danger Baby's inlaws in St. Louis, and tuned in the Weather Channel for tornado news.  Dad was worrying about getting to the depot on time.  It's all about needing more time, or thyme:

Just In Time 
By Jule Styne, Adolph Green, Betty Comden, performed by Dudley Moore

Just in time

you’ve found me

just in time


Before you came my time was running low


I was lost the losing dice were tossed


My bridges all were crossed nowhere to go

Thank heaven in all the tossed airplanes no lives were lost!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Double-snouted brush-footed pearly crescentspot

Spent way too much time last evening identifying this butterfly, making a slide show, and attempting to write a poem.  Phyciodes tharos was worth it.

The butterfly is a pearly crescentspot, or pearl crescentspot, a very common little creature.  It was also a very cooperative creature, sitting on the leaf right at my eye level, slowly opening and closing its wings and pirouetting.

The slide show still won't work for me, but you can clearly see the double snout. 





You may want to make a crescentspot Tiffany lamp after viewing, or plant more asters.

Good to know that Phyciodes tharos has no economic impact, and thus might be safe from both the Republicans and the Democrats in Congress.  Now that I know what to watch for, I'll be on the lookout for its caterpillar.



The photos were taken 4/5/2011 at 4:45 p.m. on the Rowlett Creek Trail at Oak Point Nature Preserve.  The bluebonnets are fantastic right now near the amphitheater.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder