Eau de Citronella

A dearly demented friend's plans for today involved "playing in the yard". That's a vintage phrase from the Dick, Jane, and Sally era. "Playing in the yard" calls up multi-sensory memories. It was what kids of my generation and socioeconomic level did whenever we weren't at scout meetings, piano lessons, or "playing in the basement", which will have to be a different blog a different day.

Moms of the Sixties believed that children were less irritable and/or constipated if they ran around out in the fresh air and sunshine as much as possible. It probably helped our moms' outlook, too.

The bell rang at Eastridge Elementary at 3:15 p.m., and we all walked home, with older siblings looking out for younger. We didn't have backpacks because we didn't have homework. What a concept! We accomplished a great deal at school because we wore our "school clothes" and knew not to bring "nuisance items", and then we went home, changed into our "play clothes" and played. It didn't hurt that our moms all knew that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and that bedtime was eight o'clock. We went to school fed and rested so we could do our job of learning, and then we played in the yard. All that fresh air and exercise helped us sleep and eat well. What a wonderful, healthy, balanced system! I wish no child would be left behind from that system, instead of being stuck in the perpetual testing mode of elementary schools today.



"Playing in the yard" looks like kids wearing plaid pedal-pushers, Keds, grass stains, and calamine lotion. It sounds like Simon Says, crickets, squeaky swingsets, and a golf ball bouncing on the driveway in a game of jacks. It tastes like strawberries with powdered sugar, honeysuckle flowers, watermelon, and roasted marshmallows. Playing in the yard smells of fresh mowed grass, dog poop, pine needles, soggy fall leaves, and chalk for hopscotch. It feels like grass between toes, snow down your overshoe, and the stinging burn of merthiolate* on your skinned knee.

*I hope no one uses that stuff anymore!

Adopt a Word

The trouble with pets is the whole pooper-scooper issue. We have a small and skunky tank of ridiculously hardy tropical fish. No matter how much we neglect them, they refuse to die. That is my pet history in a nutshell. Harriet the Hamster was also known as The Hamster That Would Not Die. For all I know, she is now six feet long, and living along the Salt Creek Watershed in a west Omaha suburban community, feeding on small children and poodles. Our fish refuse to die unless they can leap out of the tank and get smelly on the carpet behind a son's bedroom headboard. Hermit crabs scuttle under the piano and starve to death rather than come back out into the savannas of the open free-range wall-to-wall carpet.

Don't get me started on cats and dogs. I am unable to comprehend that many people find these creatures cuddly and amusing and worth the trouble and the itchy eyes. People actually walk around with their pet dogs collecting warm feces deposits in plastic bags. These same people get squeamish about slimy papier mache glue!

I've seriously considered adopting a zoo animal in the past. Pride of ownership without hairballs and scooped poopering for my kids. Unless I wanted to sponsor Madagascar hissing cockroaches, this sort of pet was out of my price range.

Give this etymologist a butterfly net! Online Etymological Dictionary now offers users the option of sponsoring a word for six months for only ten buckaroos. You never have to take a word to the vet for shots, or clean its habitat. One still has the problem of selecting the cutest, fuzziest, most loyal word to sponsor. I want one that is playful, but never gets fleas, and cleans up after itself. You can the word pet's pedigree. Afterall, that's what etymology is all about!

Crabby start to the day

Shame on the Dallas Morning News for placing yellow adhesive advertising stickers on the front page banner many mornings in the past month. I cannot believe the newspaper really wants to annoy and alienate so many subscribers. We don't have to subscribe, you know. We can get our news online. For a small price I could get my New York Times crossword puzzle online, too.

I happen to like waking up early, but slowly, with the newspaper and hot coffee enjoyed in bed. So every morning at six I sneak out front to snag the plastic bag containing the DMN. I pour my first cup of coffee, and head back to bed to open the paper. Dagnabbit!! There's another one of those yellow stickers assaulting my eyes.

Newspapers have always had a silent contract with readers. Both sides know that "All the news that's fit to print," really means "All the advertising they can possibly squeeze in." Everybody got along more or less, as long as the front page was only news reporting. In the latest redesign of the DMN, we got a far left column (not politically of course, just on the page) advertising features in the next day's paper. It's the equivalent of t.v. news teases that say "Cows close four lanes of freeway. Details at ten."

This month, the DMN voided the contract with readers. It started slapping yellow stickers on the front page making sure we all know that advertising is king. The stickers are clearly marked with the 3M trademark. 3M is the maker of Post-It Notes, those ubiquitous "stickies" that contaminate recycled paper and gum up the works of deinking and recycling machines.

The American Forest and Paper Association defines contaminant:

Any item or material that reduces the quality of paper for recycling or makes it unrecyclable. Contaminants include metal, foil, glass, plastic, stickies, food, hazardous waste, carbon paper, waxed boxes, and synthetic fabrics. Collecting paper co-mingled with other recyclables may increase contaminants.

Today's yellow contaminant advertises Troy Aikman's car dealership. If you would like to call Troy and tell him this advertising is proof those concussions on the field caused major brain damage, the number is (214) 361-8100.

Dallas Morning News, a subsidiary of Belo Corp.
508 Young St.
Dallas, TX 75202
Circulation (214) 745-8383
Main number (214) 977-8222
Viewpoints (214) 977-8494
letterstoeditor@dallasnews.com
Fax (972) 263-0456

American Forest & Paper Association
1111 19th Street, NW
Suite 800
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: (202) 463-2700
Email: info@afandpa.org

Following a fivesome on the green

The Nasher Sculpture Garden's "Saturday Night in the City" event was great fun. The Nasher is a lovely green art oasis in downtown Dallas' Arts District, between the Dallas Museum of Art, the Morton Meyerson Symphony Center, and the Crow Collection of Asian Art. The Nasher was designed by Renzo Piano to showcase the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection of contemporary sculpture.

The evening was low-keyed with jazz and wine, people sitting on marble benches, posing for photos by the fountains, and walking around the sculptures as the evening darkened. In some parts of the garden the breeze was pleasant, but in others the humidity portended a thunderstorm.

Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth presented a piece created for the garden. Five female dancers began at Jonathan Borofsky's "Walking to the Sky", then danced to different sculptures with the musicians and audience walking all around with them (an effect similar to following a foursome at a golf tournament). They danced around the George Segal figures, the Maillol and Rodin nudes, the "Schist Furniture Group", over to the Borosky "Hammering Man", around and through the Serra Curves, then the headless Polish crowd, the very large steel sculpture by di Suvero, ending back at "Walking to the Sky". The music was by three musicians with electric guitar, keyboard/synthesizer, and ceramic drum, that was only annoying a few times.

After the dance, I went through the David Smith exhibit, which is excellent. Smith's powerful calligraphic brush drawings give an excellent insight to the sculptor's though process. I am puzzled by his mixing ink with egg white, and have had no luck researching that online. Maybe after I go to the grocery store I can try it. Then back outside to see the sculptures in the garden against a darker sky. I am marking my calendar for the Bruce Wood Dance performance on June fourth.

Tangled up in blue

The Friday Lunch Gang helped me fill my youngest's bedroom with blue balloons this noon. I fed them even though my son couldn't be there for lunch. Actually, that worked perfectly. They didn't feel silly doing their ravenous locusts routine since they were helping me inflate fifty giant balloons and hanging five hundred blue Christmas lights. A dearly demented friend gave me the blue lights for my birthday because she knew they were my favorites. I didn't want to wait until Christmas to use them.

I had a snack of microwave nachos with cheddar cheese not long after blowing up at least fifteen balloons. That is a peculiarly lingering combination. During the Clinton administration I used to be an ice cream volunteer lady in the middle school cafeteria twice a month.* Several times I watched boys squirt entire cans of CheezWhiz straight into their mouths for lunch. I bet it was a similarly lingering experience.

*FYI: Cookies'n'cream ice cream sandwiches were the most popular. Today I served Mooo Bars instead. Once read a novel by John Updike called Memories of the Ford Administration. For some reason, my memories are starting to glump into four-year chunks. I wonder what frozen novelty each president preferred. And what Bob Dylan likes best...

John Kerry does not install hot water heaters

Back in March I had to buy a new hot water heater, which involves a city building permit. The city has to inspect the installation. The inspector showed up at eight yesterday morning although I had asked the installation company to set it up for this morning. The installation failed the inspection because the type B vent is touching the combustible sheetrock. This is a BAD thing. My water heater works very hard to keep up with the showers of a teen male, so the vent is frequently hot.

I called the installation company, requesting this repair be made today. They would call me back, they claimed. This morning the same city inspector showed up to inspect the repair, which, duh, had not been completed. More calls to the installation company...someone will call me within thirty minutes with the time they will arrive to make the repair. Yeah, right. That was two hours ago.

Finally the phone rings. I grab it. A timid-sounding woman introduces herself. I figure she's timid because she knows I am an unhappy customer (she doesn't even know about my ex-husband's latest stunt, after all, and that I am fuming enough to turn emails green). She launches very slowly into a Texans for John Kerry spiel. "Oh," I say, "I thought you were calling to fix the hot water heater!" She decides she will call back some other time. She probably senses I "still need one-inch minimum clearance to combustibles on my type B vent".

Sentimental Soccer Mom

An important part of my life is coming to a close. I have loved being a soccer mom, and a sometime t-ball/baseball mom since the final year of the Reagan administration!

When I explained to my students and their parents that I would be rushing out of class right at six p.m. to make it to the last regular season game of the PYSA Recreational Soccer Under-19 League, they asked if I would cry on this occasion. They were kidding around, but I seriously answered that it was entirely possible.

Turned out I didn't get to cry. The game was close and well-played. Our team advanced to the playoffs. At least one more game for my career!

She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother

Billy Boy, Billy Boy! It seems to me there used to be a saying about the best perfume being the aroma of home-cooking, but I can't seem to track it down. Not that I actually participate in home-cooking or flowery fragrances if I can help it. And what about that famous New Car Smell?

I'm scentsitive. Beauty and cleaning product smells really bother me. Cooking smells aren't as aggravating. Still, the aroma of home-cooking is trailing me, literally. Home is a euphemism here for grocery deli counter:

Oh, where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?
Oh, where have you been, Charming Billy?
I have been to seek a wife,
She's the joy of my life,
She's a young thing
And cannot leave her mother.

Did she ask you to come in, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?
Did she ask you to come in, Charming Billy?
Yes, she asked me to come in,
There's a dimple in her chin.
She's a young thing
And cannot leave her mother.

Can she make a cherry pie, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?
Can she make a cherry pie, Charming Billy?
She can make a cherry pie,
Quick as a cat can wink an eye,
She's a young thing
And cannot leave her mother.

How old is she, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?
How old is she, Charming Billy?
Three times six and four times seven, Twenty-eight and eleven,
She's a young thing
And cannot leave her mother.


I bought a rotisserie chicken at Albertsons this afternoon. It was the apricot honey glaze $4.99 version. Loaded the groceries into the trunk of the Buick.

Aaaaahhhhhh. That chicken smells delicious. The Buick smells delectable. The chicken has flipped over in the trunk of the Buick, and there's apricot honey glaze soaking into the floor. The vent circulation is better than one might expect. Bon apetit!

Getting out the dyslexic makeover voting bloc

On my way to and from work I drive through Dallas City Council district 11. Linda Koop is running for the Council, and there are campaign yard signs all along my route. This blog doesn't endorse any candidate. I don't even live in Dallas. Neither does my coworker who reports that she reads the campaign signs as:

Kinda
Loop

The brain is a strange and wonderful thing. It sees things as it expects to see them based on previous experiences. It votes for the incumbent without really analyzing the challenger.



On Wednesdays I drive through Richardson, and notice the many yard signs with small yellow italic lettering against a navy blue background:

Kathy!
Justice-Nelson

Haven't found an online campaign page, so I can't post the image. My brain routs the information to the mental department of home improvement contractors where it will languish since I can't afford home improvements. Again, I don't live in Richardson, and I'm not endorsing anyone. If I knew who designed the signs, I would vote against that firm. It's confusing enough that the candidate's name includes the word "justice". I don't compute that Kathy is running for some office that doesn't involve justice because I'm still wondering if Kathy is roofing, landscaping, or doing a kitchen renovation on the house.

It may be that Kathy! is feeling kinda loopy.

Buoyed by the Lord God Bird

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I opened my Friday's Dallas Morning News and saw the front page headline, "Ivory-billed woodpecker rediscovered". My reaction was a variant of the legendary response of bird-watchers who were lucky enough to sight the ivory-billed; "Oh, God, that's so wonderful!" My heart filled with joy, and my lungs seemed to fill extra full of oxygen. That is how hope feels, like a kite pulling upward on a thermal. Life is good. There's an ivory-billed woodpecker in the swampy woods of Arkansas.

The ivory-billed had been thought extinct for sixty years. A giant with a length of eighteen to twenty inches and a wingspan near three feet, this is not your friendly neighborhood woodpecker. Imagine a woodpecker the size of a crow.

I don't need to get in a kayak and go looking for the Lord God Bird. I wouldn't want to distract it from its business of surviving and spreading hope. I look out on my condo patio every morning to look for ivory-billed woodpeckers, blue morpho butterflies, and komodo dragons.

It hasn't happened so far, but I am elated by the visits from rosy house finches, green anole lizards, and busy spiders. I am encouraged to go seek that most elusive species, the comfortable sandal. Yes, the supportive, breathing, cute sandal for standing up all day teaching. It might have survived somewhere out there in the swampy big woods. It might even be on sale!

By the way, did you ever notice how much Lyle Lovett looks like Woody Woodpecker?

Please enjoy "Found in Arkansas: Hope on Wings" in today's New York Times, and NPR's Radio Expedition on the subject.

Candid Camera

My eighty-two year old dad's take on the bare midriff phenomenon is a lesson in making the world a friendlier place. Whenever he sees a female with an exposed navel he imagines that she is taking a photo of him with her navel cam. He always smiles so the picture will turn out nice. She always smiles back.

Does that mean that facial piercings are really voice recorders? Am I on the air? Testing. One. Two.

Sorta Supper, Kinda Cuisine

I am auditioning for my own cooking show on the local cable access channel, or at least that's how I feel. Dad is here for an extended visit. I am cooking. A lot. At least by my standards. Normally, I am good for one home-cooked meal per day, preferably breakfast; one fresh fruit smoothie; one salad; and then one Bonus delicious meal per week for the Lunch Gang.

Dad sits at the table to visit with me while I cook, but sometimes he just stares as I attempt to put together a meal with wholesome sidedishes. "And what would that be called?," he asks.

[I need to work up more patter for my cooking show. Witty banter with the celebrity cohost. Product placement. Testimonials for smoke detectors and grease-cutting cleansers.]

A. "Well, Dad, this is my famous Kinda Chinese Chicken Without Cashews." Dad had already eaten the cashews to go with his beer.

B. "Well, Dad, this is my famous Tostita-less Spanish Pork Chops With Canned Black Beans, 2 for $1.00 On Special".

C. "Well, Dad, this is my world-reknowned Roast Beef With Spackling Paste Mashed Potatoes", so you need to sing the song about "Scram Gravy Ain't Wavy". You've always said Scram Gravy was made with cornstarch.

*****
The closest I get to gourmet ingredients is the jar of Lyle's Golden Syrup given to me by the dear ex-wife of my organic cousin. It is GOOD STUFF. Put some in a little Tupperware container that still has a matching lid. Add the last of the soy sauce, some vinegar, some lemon juice, a shake of cayenne pepper and of ginger, and 2T of cornstarch. If you use a measuring spoon, go back two spaces and do not collect $200. Put the matching lid on and shake it all up. My preschoolers would say, "shake your booty," which is another sign that our culture has gone to hell in a hand-basket. Cook some cut up chix boobs in the electric skillet in hot Crisco oil. Add cut up celery, summer squash, red pepper (or other colors), mushrooms maybe, frozen peas, and leftover Minute Rice. When it all seems warm and crispy, pour the Golden Booty Shake Mix over everything, and stir as it cooks for about two minutes. As an afterthought, set the table. Get out the chow mein noodles for crunch.

Back in the Wonder Years, I was a Camp Fire Girl. In sixth grade we had to have a progressive dinner to meet a basic requirement. The girls divided into three groups to plan for the dinner. My group chose a Mexican theme. I was blasted out of my sheltered childhood by this introduction to Doritos and pinatas. The next group chose to cook Italian. I learned about the joys of candles stuck in wine bottles, spaghetti, and Ragu. Last in the progressive dinner was the Hawaiian group. Terrifying stuff of coconuts, pineapples, and Jello.

The next year in 4H Club I learned of another cuisine--the one made from canned corn, Quaker Oats, ground meat, and cream of mushroom soup. This is the second tier of comfort food, after food actually made by my mother and grandma. 4H cuisine is down-to-basics satisfying. My "4H You Learn To Bake" pamphlet is grease-stained, water-rippled, and held together with yellowed Scotch tape. We were learning to bake in 1967-68. It was a tense time for our nation, and I was a very tense junior high student. Garrison Keillor can carry on about ketchup solving all our problems, but I think 4H cuisine might work better.

In college I learned about Chinese food at the Hong Kong Pizza King just south of the UNL campus. The only link I can find on Google leads to a conservative forum discussing gay Norwegian elk, immigration, and Minutemen. As a student in the mid-Seventies, Hong Kong Pizza King was an inviting spot the size of a postage stamp just beyond campus for meeting friends and eating egg rolls. The windows would steam up from Thanksgiving to St. Patrick's Day against the solid layer of packed snow and ice on the sidewalk.

Steamed windows make everything taste better. Make a note to the set designer for my cooking show.

Joyful elephants

This may be the cutest piece of childrens' art I have ever seen, excluding works by my own sons, of course. The two green elephants are dancing through the rainy jungle with kings riding on their backs. It was painted by a kindergartner mixing all her colors from a set of Crayola So Big watercolors (just red, yellow, blue, and green). The painting was inspired by a reading of 17 Kings and 42 Elephants (Dial Books for Young Readers) (Hardcover) by Margaret Mahy, Patricia MacCarthy (Illustrator)

"Seventeen kings on forty-two elephants Going on a journey through a wild wet night, Baggy ears like big umbrellaphants, Little eyes a-gleaming in the jungle..."

Hair Club for Men

The resident teen male just flew out of here to rent a tux at the Men's Warehouse! Amen! Prom is ten days away, and I've tried very hard not to nag. I did mention that his hair was starting to look like a wolverine again. He claims if he got it cut before prom it would look really weird. Not as weird as if I trim it while he's sleeping...

When my sister went to prom back in '77, her date was a Lincoln East High Spartan varsity all-rounds/floor-X gymnast who shall remain nameless. He rented a unitard tux so he could do handsprings, splits, and other amazing feats at the dance. I hope there's a pommel horse at Southfork just in case someone shows up for prom in a unitard tux! I can almost see Miss Ellie out in the stable stroking the pommel horse's nose when up prances Pam Ewing in her johdpurs...

Don't smoke that Oobleck!

Spent a luxurious weekend in Austin being totally pampered as the guest of my cousin and her husband. It lulled me to a level of relaxation I don't attain often. For years now as a single mom I have been the Parent On Duty, the Official Decision-maker/Worrier/Driver/Enforcer/Grocery-Shopper/Chief Cook, Bottle-Washer and Scullery Maid. It's part who I am, part my situation, and part how I got in this situation (if I have to be honest). In short, this weekend was like being transplanted to Xanadu where someone else takes care of me, makes the plans, feeds me well and often, and I just have to show up, ride along and enjoy.

Back at Dallas Love airport this afternoon, fifty-two hours after I left, I was half dozing, half reading the NY Times Book Reviews. On the shuttle back to the "Parking Spot" I observed my fellow passengers through gritty, runny eyes. Having parked the old Buick in the cheapo part Friday, I was the last dropped off, and by then I was getting really groggy. Threw my bag in the car, figuring if the flower vase inside hadn't already broken it probably wouldn't.

Ran late driving to the airport Friday morning, and didn't stop for gas. Had to head for the first Chevron to fill up, and squint through the two-day tree pollen accumulation. Instead of fixating on the dollars, cents, and gallons whirling past at the pump ($2.19/gallon), I washed the windows. And washed. And washed. Adding water seemed to reconstitute the dry green scum into a gooey green film that resisted my efforts like Slimer in the old Ghostbusters cartoons.

The king of Didd would be so pleased. He was tired of snow, rain, fog, and sunshine in Dr. Seuss's Bartholomew and the Oobleck. He had his magicians create something different--a green and gooey all-new form of precipitation. Wreaked havoc in the kingdom of Didd, as I recall, much like the time little Bradfinkel brought Silly Putty to preschool art class in the pockets of his McWee Schwisms, but on a global scale.


Drove on home, and my pool shark son entered, stage right, reporting that "something was on fire down by the mailboxes". We each carried a pitcher of water down to the other end of the condos. Someone had tossed a ciggie butt into the drifts of dried yellow-green tree fluff, and it was smoking and spreading. Didn't smell like sage or incense, but more like punk for lighting fireworks.

Remember, only you can prevent Oobleck fires.