Sports medicine

Piggie pink frosting removed from two dozen grocery store birthday cupcakes and collected in a Baggie is a tad creepy.  With the securing twist-tie in place, the 1.5 pound blob reshapes into a football pigskin* you wouldn't want to catch.  Hail that, Roger Staubach!

I am not the Decider at school regarding extreme frosting, thank heaven.  The cupcakes delivered this week were clearly across the line into flagrant frosting violation, and would not be served to the kiddies.

Luckily, too, I am not in the frosting-scraping position.  With the mounds of frosting removed, the cupcakes sitting on their festive birthday napkins reminded me of obese sunbathers on a nude beach early in the tanning season.  Not a pretty sight!

Whoever thought of putting cheapo plastic Disney Princess rings into mounds of frosting on bad cupcakes packaged in clear, molded plastic must have made several fortunes by now.  Who wants to wear a sticky ring?  Who wants to bicker over the favorite princess? 

My walking buddy told me I had to get myself to a clinic Sunday to get meds for my bronchitis.  She told me I could not Pass Go or Collect $200 unless I went right away.  I like Minute Clinic inside a nearby CVS drugstore.  The nurse practitioner works through a computerized checklist.  It's a convenient, quick, efficient, inexpensive way to get help for basic medical needs.  Good to know my cough is due to allergies, and an inhaler is needed, not antibiotics or more Robitussin.  The inhaler is working.

Feeling rotten and waiting to see the nurse, I stared at the large display of robotic Zhu Zhu hamsters, Kung Zhu hamsters, hairstyling hamsters, racecar hamsters.  They reminded me of  Harriet, the hamster that would not die.  Maybe if Harriet had been coifed and driving racecars she would have been more sociable.  A battery operated hamster would have been much more appropriate for my 1987 stress level.

This pretty planter was a teacher appreciation gift.  Hope I can keep some of it alive!

While the Mavericks were shooting three-pointers like crazy to sweep the Lakers, I gave my Mother's Day bear its annual dusting.  We brought the new baby Woolly Mammoth** home from Methodist Hospital on Mother's Day 1987.  His dad and older brothers presented me with a glass teddy bear that Mother's Day.  It wasn't really my style, but it made me teary-eyed then, and it did again this Mother's Day. 

* The official NFL Wilson football weighs 0.91 pounds.

**The new baby Woolly Mammoth weighed 9.3 pounds.  That would be a whole lot of pink cake frosting.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Spring Break guest

"Honey, I'm home!" 

Don't usually get to holler into the empty nest, but the preschool class rabbit is chilling with me this week.  Norton has his preferred corner of the living room with sunshiny windows on two sides of his cage.  He's been coming to this resort for school breaks for years now, but this is the first time since I moved the Eames furniture down from the house in Lincoln. 

I'm sure Norton will learn to appreciate this design aesthetic, but his initial impression regards the lack of shadowy places for curling up to snooze. Sometime during Spring Break I'll show him the TED Talks video about Charles and Ray Eames. Then we will build with my Eames House of Cards picture deck.

In rabbit years Norton is the same age as my father, and has many of the same problems. He has watery, mattering eyes. There are incontinence issues. Norton's appetite is better, I regret to report.

Norton is either ten years old and weighs nine pounds, or weighs ten pounds at nine years of age. And after one slow gallumph around the living room he is sound asleep next to the Eames rocking chair. Alas, that is similar to my exercise regimen.

Tonight I gave Norton a full report on the visit to Parkland Hospital to tell Felecia good-bye. I pray this fantastic drama teacher's stage exit will be any hour now. My dear friend is ravaged and reduced to an ineffective gasp of her fabulous self, and every minute is precious torture.

I told Norton how Felecia once sewed Robert Plant into his tight pants. And how she was always the first person to notice the monarch butterfly migration high in the Dallas sky. Glaring blue. Orange wings. How Felecia poured her compassion into tiny glasses of German wine to toast the New Year 2005 when Fritzi was dying.

Who else would savor a drive-through lunch at Burger King with the same connoisseur's relish as a Dallas Opera performance of "Tosca"? What a gift to have shared nine operas with Felecia, and also wandered away from the guided tour to find Nedda's pink trailer from "Pagliacci" in the DO's prop storage? 

Please let the former drive time DJ at KGUS in Hot Springs, Arkansas, have "twenty thousand watts of sparkling clear power" sending her off.  Soon.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Sad berries, beauty berries, always berries

Physical/spiritual: 

life is very strange when we forget or are unable to pry them apart.

I will keep this message from my dear friend, along with the memory of our last visit about elephant jokes and bubble bath toys.  Nancy was very tired, worn out from "this dying gig" that had gone on for so very long.  Still, her quirky sense of humor was intact.  So was her skill at noticing the sublime in the ordinary.  Failing physically, her spiritual center was glowing and inspiring her friends.

Our ice storm began just hours after Nancy posted her email.  All day Tuesday I sent whatever it is I send out to wherever it is I send it requesting that Nancy's spiritual might be pried apart peacefully from her physical.  I tromped through the icy park in the howling wind to take some winter berry photos for her, and had the strangest sensation that she was sending me the berries.

I am grateful to Janie for forming and nurturing our little band of three library junky MOBOs all born in '55.  I am grateful to Steph for suggesting Muriel Barbery's Elegance of the Hedgehog, which prepared me to find "the always within the never".

This is the most true and lovely obituary I have ever read, so I include it almost in its entirety and without any permission whatsoever:

  Rush, Nancy Chandler Passed away peacefully on February 1, 2011, after long illness. Nancy was born on March 17, 1955 in Amarillo, Texas, where she graduated from Tascosa High School. She earned a B.A. in Plan II from the University of Texas at Austin and a law degree from the University of Texas School of Law in 1980. Nancy began her career as an Associate with the Dallas firm, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld, and was among that first generation of brilliant women to enter prestigious law firms in force. She was admitted to partnership in 1991. Married in 1981, Nancy is survived by her husband David S. White, her children, James D. White, Pfc. Michael J. White, and Pfc. John S. White, her parents ... and a large extended family. Nancy was a devoted member of Greenland Hills United Methodist Church, where she served faithfully in the shared work of worship, education, and mission. She enriched the lives of all she knew. Throughout her illness, Nancy never wavered from knowing in her bones that God is good all the time. Her courage and love for her family and friends inspired us all, especially in her final months. A memorial service celebrating this remarkable spirit will be held on Thursday, 10 am, February 10, 2011...

I Google "tascosa", knowing my ever-curious friend would also want to know if her high school name was related to the Aztec word for "cedar brake", "tascotal".  The Handbook of Texas Online indicates the cowboy town of Tascosa, Texas, was named for Atascosa Creek, and that "atascosa" is Spanish for boggy.  Ground in a cedar brake can become boggy when cedar tree's shaggy bark sheds and covers the ground preventing the growth of other species.  This gives rise to a monoculture, as explained by Dr. Geoffrey Stanford in the Texas Native Plant Society News, Vol. 5, No. 2, March/April 1987 .   

It is easier to Google boggy than to have a good cry celebrating the always within the never of berries.  A coincidence brought me the gift of Nancy's friendship, and I will hold it always in my heart.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Celebrating without candycanes

The youngest music group, students ages three and four, stood up to sing their holiday songs.  The children sang (well a few sang, one rang a triangle, one pounded on a xylophone, and the rest just stared at the music teacher like deer in the headlice) a song about candycanes wrapped in cellobrain.  Or maybe they were in celebrains.

Their second song was about a Christmas train coming down the tracks loaded with sacks.  The pattern was, "Susie wants a dollie" or "Jimmy wants a drum".  Being able to come up with an idea, any idea, when your turn comes around is pretty challenging at this age.  Santa please disregard these requests for carrots, skates, and big cats.  Skates in Dallas?

Outside of the holiday music performance the children have been singing "Here We Go Round the Dining Room Table" to the mulberry bush tune.  They each get a turn to name something they will bring for a feast.  Amazing how the child who has resisted tasting any vegetable all semester suddenly contributes "sugar snap peas". 

When they handed out brains, I thought they said trains, and I missed mine. 

In kindergarten I always had to play the red rhythm sticks.  I wasn't deemed with it enough to ring the triangle, swish-swash the sandpaper blocks, clang the cymbals, or tap the tambourine.  Still not, but I know many good things to bring to the dining room table on a cold and frosty Christmas.  Ms. Nancy will bring green beans almondine, green beans almondine, green beans almondine.  Ms. Nancy still wants the sandpaper blocks...

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

What would Fess Parker do?

Back in my day, kids built forts with Lincoln Logs. My students seem to be constructing faux-rustic resorts and Great Wolf Lodge waterparks.

Three seven-year-old boys build Lincoln Log cabins with "really good beds". They are comparing the quality of a night's sleep in each cabin. One boy says, "My cabin has the Sweet Number bed." He probably means a "Sleep Number bed" since he explains choosing a number to go to sleep. To one-up him, the next boy says his cabin has a Select Comfort mattress. Is this for real, or a weird dream on my saggy, lumpy mattress? I couldn't hear for sure, but I think the third boy had a "duck bed" in his cabin.

What's next? A coonskin cap with built-in Bluetooth? And mints on your pillow?

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Adding the sound effects

Seven a.m. yesterday, I was already sitting on the floor building Super Octons with a four year old. It was school conference day, and I was the distraction while his mom and dad met with the director.


I was building a flux capacitor transmogrifier. He was building an x wing fighter from the Clone Wars, but it wasn't quite done. He hadn't put on the "pews". What are the "pews?" I should have known! The pews are the part of the airship that shoot out "pew-pew, pew-pews" when it gets near another airship.

I love the translucent plastic Super Octons from the late Eighties, but they are getting brittle. Galt Toys has newer versions, probably safer from product liability lawsuits, but not quite as gorgeous. You have to add your own pews.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Domino Boy and Dot Girl Save Dallas

Don't know what I was thinking when I decided the preschoolers could make superheroes out of dominoes. Inspiration is like that. It's difficult to say where ideas arise, and how long they've simmered. Found two incomplete sets of dominoes in a box. Added a visit to the Bent Objects blog. Turned in a vague plan for six weeks of art based on one illusive idea.

Adding to the mix, the kids started playing Duck Duck Goose on the playground. It is hilarious watching the cogs turn as the preschoolers grasp the rules and highly advanced strategy of Duck Duck Goose.

My dictionary says the plural of domino can be either dominoes or dominos:



Today we built a set for our downtown Big D photo shoot with the domino superheroes to the rescue. Our city set is like a skyscraper puppet theater. The end result won't be a movie, but probably a class scrapbook for parents to see on conference day, and then for the school library.



Next week we'll be choreographing some downtown dancing worthy of the Ed Sullivan Show and a little bit of Gene Kelly with umbrellas. Now if only our dynamic dot dudes could really save downtown Dallas by resolving the convention hotel and Trinity River debates. Delivering a pizza would be nice, too.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Washing to the Sky

The skyline work of the Nasher Sculpture Center in the downtown Dallas Arts District is Joseph Borofsky's "Walking to the Sky". Figures of people seem to walk a diagonal pole from the lawn of the sculpture garden up into the sky. We like the piece. We've sort of adopted it as one of the metroplex's main landmarks.

Still, I always find it mildly eerie. The figures look like some sort of lifesize educational toys with their studied variety of races and ages, and their fashion sense of Mr. Rogers.



Yesterday I brought home the Duplos and the people for the educational dollhouse for their semiannual sanitizing cycle through the dishwasher. I can't help but wonder if the Nasher ever runs the Borofsky figures through a giant dishwasher.


They look a bit like they are ready to ride a glass-walled elevator to the sky instead of walking up that steep pole.



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Losing my marbles

I just wanted some spares to keep in the glove compartment of the Buick. Haven't you ever wanted to rush out to your car in the parking lot when you felt like you were losing your marbles?



No? Then you might not work with children! My test group of teachers all reported experiencing this phenomenom.

It's not easy to find replacement marbles these days, probably thanks to consumer product safety litigation. No one wants a child to choke on an aspirated marble. We don't want anyone [especially middle-aged teachers] to slip on a marble on the floor.

Still, I needed some marbles. Will the world be safer if I can't find any marbles at Toys R Us on a Sunday afternoon? None to be had at Hobby Lobby either. Bet kids are still sticking beans, pencils, and Legos up their nostrils in this brave new marbleless world!

Now I was obsessed. I drove to Hobby Town, the store where my kids bought models, paints, and miniatures for tabletop battle games like Warhammer. Hobby Town only had little bags of serious marbles for players who know the rules--$3.99 for a dozen and a half.



Thank heaven for US Toy/Constructive Playthings new store in Plano. That is where you can still buy a little party favor bag of marbles for seventy cents.



These are the marbles from my childhood, and possibly some considerably older. Should you be nutty enough to wonder about the origin of the expression, "losing one's marbles," I recommend this column by Ian Mayes in The Guardian. Then you can spend your Sunday afternoon wondering if this expression comes from the Elgin marbles, the game of marbles, or movable French mental furniture. I didn't even know the French had mental furniture, but if they do, the rabbits will chew on it.

This is from Wikipedia:

The little boy's mother was off to market. She worried about her boy, who was always up to some mischief. She sternly admonished him, "Be good. Don't get into trouble. Don't eat all the cabbage. Don't spill all the milk. Don't throw stones at the cow. Don't fall down the well." The boy had done all of these things on other market days. Hoping to head off new trouble, she added, "And don't stuff beans up your nose!" This was a new idea for the boy, who promptly tried it out.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

What Would Jesus Laminate?

I made two expeditions into unfamiliar territory this week in the pursuit of twenty-five cents per foot self-serve laminating. Laminating is a soul-searching effort for me, as I have to weigh the non-recyclable and non-biodegradable effect on paper against the sturdiness, weather-readiness, and preservation of the art or teaching items being laminated. Plus, I have to go to the friendly neighborhood Christian bookstore, home-schooling supply center, and vacation Bible school headquarters to get the best do-it-yourself laminating price.

It's a busy time at the bookstore. The woman ahead of me in the check-out line had her entire cart filled with identical ceramic nativity scenes that looked like Fred Flintstone's house spray-painted with gold glitter paint. The woman ahead of her wanted to use expired limit-one-per-customer coupons to buy three soft Christian rock music cds.

The three kids behind me in line were whining and badgering their mother because she had only said they could LOOK at the new "Veggie Tales" video, not that they would BUY it. Down the aisle another family values drama was being performed about a boy's desire for a Bibleman laser sword. I thought it was just kids in Target who threw tantrums over GI Joe, Star Wars, and Disney Princess videos. When my sons acted like that we knew it was time to read The Berenstain Bears Get the Gimmes.




Bible action figures are hot toys. Who wouldn't want the Almighty Heroes action set? The characters have the physique of the Incredible Hulk, but cuter tunics and slingshots. I'm sure they can be entwined through the chainlink baseball backstop the same way my youngest posed his GI Joes. They can be buried in the playground gravel and lost just as easily as a Ninja Turtle.



We agonize as parents over the toys we buy and media influences on our children. If we let our children play with toy guns, are we raising the schoolshooters and mallshooters of the next decade? If we give our children plastic action figures with Bible verses, will they become the peacemakers, the philosophers, the charitable and ethical leaders we desperately need? If our daughters dress Queen Esther and Deborah the Warrior dolls in their fashion sets with they live with more purity and purpose than if they played with Bratz and Barbie dolls? If our son prefers dressing Joseph in his amazing coat to putting on the Full (silver plastic) Armor of God playset, will he become gay? Is there really any difference between wearing a Power Rangers costume trick-or-treating, or wearing a Samson Super-Muscles costume to the Sunday School fall harvest carnival?



I don't know. My sons are grown now. They are already teacher, administrator, photographer, law student, volunteer, writer, artist, runner, chef, and traveler. They will work in many other fields in their lifetimes. They have a core set of values guiding their relations with others, a respect for nature, an inner motivation, an appreciation of art and the lessons of history, and they are kind to their mommy.

So what toys do they insist that I never give or throw away? The "good wood rifles" and the Legos. The toys of imagination, role-playing, empowerment, and construction--and of precious memories.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Fine motor/fine costumes

Playing paper dolls required fine motor skills, patience, perserverance, frustration tolerance, imagination and delayed gratification. It would be difficult to find such a twenty-nine cent education in any toys today.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

4 Ballet Dancing Dolls

Annette Funicello & Audrey Meadows.

Lt. Cmdr. Data? & Kerwin Mathews?

Found this folder of paper dolls on my last trip to Nebraska. Just pretend that the yellowed Scotch tape reinforcements are Ace bandages. As a kid, I thought the female dancers resembled Mouseketeer Annette and Jackie Gleason's wife on The Honeymooners. The male dancers seemed devoid of identity. Perhaps they were androids.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

And the painted ponies go up and down

The little students bring me the Chinese checkers board. They are attracted to all the colorful pegs in the star points. Will I show them how to play? If they will give me a minute to remember, I will be glad to help them.

A minute is not enough. I remember the game shelf behind the kitchen door at Grandma's house, with the Chinese checkers board and the marbles in the cottage cheese carton next to the cardboard can of Tinker Toys.

There are dust motes in the sunbeams playing on the dark curved legs of the buffet. A German clock ticks. African violets and baby's breath grow in little glazed pots on the shelves my dad built for his mother's dining room window. Real people, possibly related to me, crocheted the tablecloth. I pray that I'm never the one to drip brown gravy on the tablecloth.

We play Chinese checkers near the violets sitting on the itchy rug. Sometimes we play in the pink bedroom under the tall brass bed. That's our hideout. We can sit on the cool wood floor down there and peek out under the edge of the chenille bedspread. The windows are open to the sounds of mourning doves or afternoon locusts. It is 1967. Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell sing on the transistor radio. Pete Seeger. The Byrds, too.


There's a circle inside the heavy glass jar of gum drops.

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star ...

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.



To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones
A time to gather stones together

To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time of war, a time of peace
A time of love, a time of hate
A time you may embrace
A time to refrain from embracing

To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time to love, a time to hate
A time of peace, I swear it's not too late!

And a time to make sure you turned off the burner.



According to the Kansas State Historical Society, Chinese checkers was a craze in the 1930s:

Chinese checkers was not a new game; it was a simplified variation of a European board game called Halma, which was developed around 1880 and had its own run of popularity in America during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Like Halma, from two to six players could play Star Checkers. The first player to move all of his ten marbles from one point of the star to the point directly opposite by means of checkers-like jumps was the winner.


How strange to find this information. My grandma's name was Halma!

Accountability

In the frigid winters of adolescent memories I arrived at the high school entrance before daylight in alternating pale green Chevrolets for M-W-F and T-Th. Our dads took turns driving Janice and me. My dad drove a 1954 Chevy automatic. Her dad drove a 1951 three-speed on the column with a windshield visor. A dad would start the car to warm it up at least fifteen minutes before we were to leave. Often, the batteries were plugged in overnight, or they wouldn't have started at all. Both trunks held a snowshovel, a container of sand, jumper cables, and a blanket. The '51 had chains on the tires. The '54 had snowtires. The '54 had an AM radio, but I'm not sure about the '51. Having lived in Texas for fifteen years, I finally quit keeping sand and a shovel in the trunk. The jumper cables are still there, but that's because I have sons. Those sons acquired the sort of cars that needed jumping many times.

When I was teaching preschool classes at the local rec center I was stunned when kids would "play hospital". They would slap "the patient" on the chest with a toy frypan, and yell, "Clear!" I always want to yell, "Clear!" when I use jumper cables. The preschoolers caused my confusion about defrybulators and defibrillators. The kids would also play "Lamaze" and coach each other about breathing and pushing. Then Mr. Potato Head would birth a mini-Potato Head from his rear storage pod bay door. The preschoolers took this in stride, but I was traumatized.

Janice and I have been reminiscing about practice driving with our dads. She wrote, "...I tried to turn the steering wheel (with no power steering) ... This was, of course, after I had killed it a couple times getting to the corner to turn. " Ah, yes. Killing the car. A common experience learning to drive!

When I was teaching my oldest to drive my stick shift minivan up at his high school parking lot, he killed it many, many times. Alas, this is Bush Country. We can carry concealed, but we can't fess up to "killing the car," or "killing the engine". The car "dies". The engine "dies". No one takes verbal responsibility for these inconvenient and unfortunate automotive murders perpetrated by stupidity or inexperience. No one is accountable. I've been laughed at many times in Oklahoma and Texas for using the expression, "I killed the car".

In Nebraska we own up to our transgressions. If the banana barf-yellow rusty 1970 Chevy Nova dies at the corner of 27th and Holdrege everyday on the way home from work due to a mechanical problem that requires opening the hood, unscrewing the butterfly wing nut, and poking a screwdriver into the air intake valve while being honked at by unsympathetic motorists, (not to mention trying not to get your muffler* stuck in the engine causing driver demise by strangulation), we say that the "car died". By contrast, if we have done some really dumb driver move, we admit we "killed the car".

*In this example, "muffler" means a long knit or crocheted scarf worn around the collar of a winter coat. It has nothing to do with Midas. I don't know if it is called a "muffler" down here, because you can almost get through January without even wearing a coat!

No, No, Cyrano!

The last few minutes of a preschool art class get a bit hectic. The first kids who finish the project and wash their hands need something constructive to occupy them so they won't tackle each other. A few kids are still finishing their art, and need my encouragement toward that end. The line of kids waiting to wash hands needs my attention so they don't wipe their painty hands on each other.

Usually I place a couple activities on the big floor rug for people with clean hands; a building toy, a book, finger puppets, a puzzle, or the ever popular bucket of dinosaur postcards. We also have some lovely smooth square samples of marble counter tops to stack or sort.

Today, though, the kids asked me to get the Drama Nose. Since our program is half art and half drama, my brain veered off on the theatrical instead of the practical. What the kids wanted was:

Working on my project

"Project" is a fun word for me. When I was about two and a half my dad started building a playhouse for me down in the basement of our rental duplex. It was created in components so it could be assembled out in the yard. I would go down to the basement to "help" Dad on The Project, while completely clueless about its actual goal. The building was exciting enough! So "project" is loaded with creativity, construction, nurturing, hero-worship, mystery, trust, sawdust, enamel paint smells, primary colors, and letting go of the outcome. Now that I ponder it, love and construction are linked in my wiring from birth. Seems to me if you love a child you teach them to pound nails, and you let them experiment with the metal tape measure and the miter box.

Fries

Today a kid told me that he had gotten a flu shot, so his mom bought him a "nactivity scene". Is that the one with ninja turtle wise men?

Goober and Cletus have tried another exorcism of my Evil Blinker. $36 for the latest attempt, but $64 for the rental car. I am sad to say the Enterprise employees who helped me were May and December Texas university graduates. They asked if I wanted to supersize the compact car I rented.