Gordon MacRae

Oklahoma, where the snakes will bite you in the groin!

This from today's Dallas Morning News, page 11A:

Oklahoma man bitten by 2 snakes in garage

OKLAHOMA CITY--A Tecumseh man was in critical condition Friday after being bitten four times by two snakes. Officials said James Cave, 47, was at a garage Sunday when he felt a pain in his foot. When he reached down, a pygmy rattlesnake bit his hand and his other foot. He stumbled back and fell over a barrel, landing on a copperhead snake that bit him on the right foot, then in the groin, officials said.

Yep. That would be the Oklahoma I remember. Bet James Cave, 47, said, "Yeeow! Ayipioeeay!" Once this James Cave, 47, gets out of the hospital he will go home and tell his buddies to beware of barrels.

We had a copperhead of significant size reclining against the garage wall behind the boys' little red wagon at our second house in Edmond, Oklahoma. Construction of two homes along the creek had probably displaced Our Reptile Friend. I didn't even get very freaked, although I did hack it to pieces with a garden shovel, a technique I had perfected in Omaha on large garter snakes whose worst offense was surprising me by lying under my kitchen doorstep when I got out of the Toyota carrying a baby and bags of groceries. After a couple years in Oklahoma you get used to dangerous varmits and poisonous vermin (not to be confused with yerm-lim) being part of the daily scenery. After the horrendous invasion of the field mice in our first Edmond house, I generally cheered for snakes and other predators.

I was pleased to find a new internet tool, ePodunk.com. Give it a try. It doesn't bite. And I'm glad to report it is raining here in Texas, and that sure smells sweet:

Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain
And the wavin' wheat can sure smell sweet
When the wind comes right behind the rain.
Oklahoma, Ev'ry night my honey lamb and I
Sit alone and talk and watch a hawk
Makin' lazy circles in the sky.
We know we belong to the land
And the land we belong to is grand!
And when we say Yeeow! Ayipioeeay!
We're only sayin' You're doin' fine, Oklahoma! Oklahoma O.K.

Short and stout

My younger brother, who was not really named Igor, was terrified of creatures he believed were living in our basement. He called them The Gooeys. We were never sure how he pictured The Gooeys. I gradually developed my own mental image of his fear factors. The first time I saw pool noodles in Albertson's in the mid-Nineties, The Gooeys popped into my mind.

My biggest basement fear was just of piano practice, but maybe "dread" is a better description than "fear". When my parents bought a piano and paid for piano lessons, I thought they had ruined my life.

For the past year, my high school senior son has told me regularly, "You ruined my life, Mom," all because I insisted that he take fourth year French. His school counselor backed me on my requirement that he continue with math OR with French in twelfth grade.

Over the year, French 4AP has become the biggest YRMLM ever, even bigger than a basement Gooey adjusted for forty years of inflation. YRMLM is pronounced yerm-lim, of course. It is a noun, and also a fairly active and useful verb in its past plupretzel-apoplexic tense.

This weekend I'm not the POD or the T-POD. Im still a yerm-lim, though:

POD Parent on duty
T-POD Transporting parent on duty (sing along: I'm a little T-POD, short and stout)
YRMLM You ruined my life, Mom

At Least He Admits It

"I dont no Waer WE OR"
The kindergarten male has captured the trouble facing pirates since days of yore. I hope he will stop and ask directions!


Clay island glued on a corrugated cardboard circle, painted with liquid watercolors. The volcano is about to erupt.

Rob From the Rich

I forget, Robin. Are we good guys or bad guys?"



My kids loved the 1973 Disney animated "Robin Hood" with animal characters, and Phil Harris doing the voice of Little John. By Disney standards, it was light stuff. No orphans or forest fires. No nightmares about being swallowed by a whale or turned into a donkey. (No farting warthogs, thank you very much.) I actually purchased a VHS tape of the movie, (or maybe it was Beta!), and let them watch it once every month or so. Then my Merry Men mini-guys would go merrily off to wander in Sherwood Forest down the hall to outsmart the sheriff of Nottingham . Wearing sawed-off pillowcases over their PJs, green felt hats, paper towel tube quivers slung over their shoulders for the suction-cup arrows, a sockful of pebbles tucked into a $3.99 black plastic gun belt now missing its holsters and pistols, and maybe the "Special Bunny" or a sippy cup, they were ready for action. With only the slightest of adjustments and additions to this gear, the guys could also play Peter Pan, Camelot, the Oklahoma Land Rush, Plains Indians, California Gold Rush prospectors, and Ice Age cave men. For instance, my youngest might need a juice box and a cup of dry Cherrios instead of the Special Bunny and sippy cup. The sofa cushions might become a fort long enough for me to change the sheets on the bed with the stagecoachesque headboard, or scrub the bathtub moat.

The bed with the weird stagecoach headboard also made a very fine hook and ladder firetruck, or a covered wagon for Laura and Mary Ingalls, with Jack, the brindle bulldog, leaving the Big Woods of Wisconsin to travel to the Prairie or the Banks of Plum Creek. Didn't matter that Laura and Mary were girls. My sons knew good, brave characters to play when they heard about them.

Faint heart never won fair lady,
Little John advises Robin. Can't quite pin it down, but this seems to be a very old proverb. Faulty bridges don't seem to woo fair maidens, either. A young gentleman of my acquaintance is having trouble with his eight year-old dental Maryland Bridge falling out of his mouth at inconvenient moments. This causes him to hiss like the Terry Thomas narrated snake/henchman in the movie. It puts a dent in his self-confidence, and a crimp in his whirlwind romance when the fake tooth gets stuck in a sandwich.

Unfortunately, remedies are expensive. Might be time to trade in the quiver and sippy cup for a dusty felt hat and a Sara Lee Butter Streusel coffee cake aluminum pan for some serious prospecting.

Check the freshness date

I do so wish I'd discovered that the Anchored Nomad blogger was seeking photos of refrigerators (and written inventories) from around the globe before the project expired on Friday. It would have been a good incentive to do just a little tidying up before telling my fridge to smile and say "Cheese".

There's something fascinating about staring into an open refrigerator. Of course, I am a woman of a certain age, and this is Texas, so coooolness is the main attraction.

It's entertaining, too, to watch other people stare into a refrigerator. Are they making mental shopping lists or imagining what new casserole they might invent? My youngest stares like he's waiting for a fully formed meal to spring forward like Athena from Zeus' forehead, then he eventually grabs a DP and the salsa. My middle son actually pulls out every fresh fruit and veggie, deli meats, cheese, and condiments to make something really yummy for himself. My oldest stands there holding an open book in one hand until he completely forgets about eating and goes back to reading.

Anchored Nomad's contributors have given us the opportunity to stare as long as we want into strangers' fridges wondering if they are the type who would drink straight out of the milk carton or what's the occasion for all that champagne. When I finally pull myself away, it's with regret that I couldn't see inside the freezer compartments, then study the magnets and calendars on the fridge doors, too.

Some of the refrigerators are so organized that they remind me of model appliance demonstration kitchens at the gas or electric company headquarters or the county extension office. Some really suggest cultural differences. None suggest that children or teens live in the homes. Obviously, none are from Texas, because there's not a can of Dr. Pepper to be seen!

And let me just add, I'm jealous of the librarian who got to catalog the Frigidaire Collection at Kettering University in Flint, Michigan. What a cool job!


Also, in the what's-this-world-coming-to category, you can buy a retro 1950-look refrigerator with "21st century" technology inside for about four thousand dollars (free shipping, though). I'm not talking about the Sims game here.

My first house in Omaha had a genuine pink 1950 refrigerator as big as a tank with the freezer at the bottom. We called it Big Pink.

Teeny Little Surfer Guys

Sesame Street debuted in 1969, when I was in my teen babysitting career mode. I made between thirty-five cents and a dollar per hour babysitting. My young charges were sometimes allowed to watch Sesame Street or Mister Roger's Neighborhood. My own kids watched Sesame Street sometimes, but they preferred Reading Rainbow. I did too, since it encouraged development of a longer attention span.

There are three songs* from Sesame Street that pop into my brain uninvited. One is the Teeny Little Super Guy. Had to confer with colleagues of similar age to come up with the visual memory of the Guy when my class started work on their teeny little surfer guys for our Surf City art project. Our Surf City is also inspired by last year's movie Riding Giants, which should have been on my list of cool movies this week, and by Gloria and Ted Rand's picture book, Aloha, Salty. That's why you'll see some surfing puppies if you look real close.



Female Singers: Teeny Little Super Guy
Pops right up before your eye
He's no bigger than your thumb
Teeny Little Super Guy: Snap your fingers, here I come
Now stop me if you've heard this one...



*The other two Sesame Street song flashbacks:

Takes a lot of little nuts
To make a jar of peanut butter
'Cause one peanut in a jar
Really doesn't go too far
Gotta crack and shell and mix 'em
There's no other way to fix 'em
Takes a lot of little nuts to do the job

and

I'm a dog
I'm a workin' dog
I'm a hard workin' dog
Hard workin' dog

Jan & Dean
Surf City
(Brian Wilson/Jan Berry)

I bought a pretty cool wagon and we call it a woody
(Surf City, here we come)
You know, it's not very cherry, it's an oldie but a goody
(Surf City, here we come)
Well, it ain't got a backseat or a rear window
But it still gets me where I wanna go
Chorus:
And we're goin' Surf City, 'cause it's two to one
You know we're goin' Surf City, gonna have some fun
Yeah we're goin' Surf City, 'cause it's two to one
You know we're goin' Surf City, gonna have some fun, now

When it rains it pours

Few things rival the chills, spills, and excitement of teaching a preschool class during a dramatic thunderstorm. The change in barometric pressure before the storm already has the kids in a loud and hyper mode, then during the actual lightning and thunder there's a full spectrum of panic, mild fears, whimpering, orating, yelling, and bladder control issues. I was just glad the electricity didn't go off during this morning's storm.

Sometimes the best course for a preschooler is to draw pictures about the storm. Grab a handful of crayons, and color scribble-scrabble with them all at once as forceful as the thunder while making sound effects! Drawing can help get you through the tough days when your goldfish dies, there's a big spider in the bathtub, or when you have flashbacks to Bambi in the forest fire. It's best if your favorite grown-up sits with you very patiently while you draw circles for Bambi, Bambi's mother, and everything else that is bothering you, with extra tornadoes thrown in for good measure.



Just home from making a presentation at the condo association meeting. Nothing on "Seinfeld" about condo associations was exaggerated! Our meetings would be great Jerry Springer material. I had to get my special blanket and my special bunny to rub against my cheek until I felt calm enough to start scribbling with a handful of crayons!

My oldest son was the crisis response man aka grad student supervisor on the scene last Saturday at seven a.m. EST when a berserk wounded deer found its way into the dorm quadrangle courtyard. The deer had become injured crashing into plate glass windows. While it had descended stairs to get into the courtyard, it wouldn't go back up the stairs to leave. When campus police arrived, they wanted to shoot the deer, but were afraid of ricocheting bullets around the enclosed quad. My son also wanted to avoid traumatizing the ten year-olds staying in the dorm for a summer basketball camp--it's that Bambi's mother thing. The police finally herded the deer up the stairs, and it took off running for the Alumni Center.

High on a hill was a lonely goatherd
Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo
Loud was the voice of the lonely goatherd
Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo

Folks in a town that was quite remote heard
Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo
Lusty and clear from the goatherd's throat heard
Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo

O ho lay dee odl lee o, o ho lay dee odl ay
O ho lay dee odl lee o, lay dee odl lee o lay

Imitating Penguins

I've always believed that a really cold movie is just the antidote for the Texas summer. It can't be a cool movie with action heroes and special effects. I'm talking about COLD.

My old cold favorites include the Russian dacha parts of Dr. Zhivago. I'm always annoyed that Omar Sharif's Yuri prefers the blonde Julie Christie's Lara to the brunette Geraldine Chaplin's Tonya, but the ice encrusted dacha is so beautiful, so magical, he can be forgiven! Just writing about it can ward off a hot flash.


My new cold favorite is March of the Penguins. This documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman, in his cool voice, is just mind-boggling in its true-life-real nature strangeness. The cinematography is gorgeous, and more chilling than standing in front of your open refrigerator all day. And then there are the penguins! Emperor penguins live such harsh, bizarre, and beautiful lives that you can't help going slack-jawed watching. Your struggle to find a parking place is nothing. Your long wait at the grocery deli counter to get the sliced ham and provolone--nothing. Troubles balancing family and career? Phooph! Can't find comfortable walking shoes? Thphthph! Need a Milky Way to tide you over until lunch? You are soooo pathetic! Someone else controls the office thermostat??? Try seventy below zero with winds over one hundred miles per hour, and you've got to balance an egg the size of a mango on your feet, preventing it from touching the ice while you keep moving so you don't freeze to death---FOR WEEKS AT A TIME WITH NO MEALS! It's so weird the Surgeon General has warned that it causes Brain Freeze.

If the movie isn't coming soon to a theater near you, go to the website to see the trailers and still photos. There are some great shots to use as your computer desktop background. The movie is probably appropriate for kids over ten.

Trying to explain the movie and the lifestyle of the penguins is very difficult. If you see someone at the office watercooler waddling on his heels, with arms tight to his side and hands flared out, and moving his neck in odd arcing motions, you will know he has been to the penguin movie! If he regurgitates a full belly of krill on your wingtips, or tries to demonstrate the choreography for passing off the newly-hatched chick from the dad's feet to the mom's feet in that tight space behind your desk, he's gone way over the edge. He can't help imitating the penguins, but do suggest he practice in the privacy of his own home!



What of the other favorite cold and golden oldies? I always feel refreshed after watching Sean Connery and all the submarines off Greenland in The Hunt for Red October.


I usually want to go off on a trip to Lithuania in the winter, after Ramius tells about growing up in Vilnius and going fishing with his grandfather. I can feel the snow against my cheeks even though it's over one hundred degrees outside.


Still, a woman of my years can feel overly warm at times, especially on an Ozone Action Day. That's when it's time to play a video of Jeremiah Johnson with Robert Redford and Will Geer fur-trapping and inviting bears into their cabin. Are you wearing a fur hat and snowshoes yet?

Shivery Honorable Mentions go to:

--the 1940 Disney "Fantasia" for the animation of the fairies changing the seasons with the "Dance of the Flowers" music from the Nutcracker Suite.

--the scenes just before the massacre on the Washita in Little Big Man with Dustin Hoffman and Chief Dan George.

--the winter scenes in the 1969 version of Jean Craighead George's book, My Side of the Mountain.

Please submit your own personal cold movie favorites. The National Weather Service is predicting a steamy summer for my zip code. Thanks, and chill out!

Eggplant

Technology is either the hero or the goat tonight, as Charlie Brown would say. I'm looking at the marvelous images of Tempel1, the pickle/potato/eggplant comet, on NASA t.v. over the internet, and hearing the Mission Control communications for the impactor maneuvers. It's worth staying up past my bedtime.

There are some things technology couldn't handle today. Efforts to rendezvous at Kaboom Town, Addison's large fireworks display and festival, with several other parties failed. We were all trying to communicate by cell phone to find each other in the crowd, same as thousands of other folks. The network overloaded, and we never managed to rendezvousie-vousie with my friends or my guys' college friends. Smoke signals would have been more effective. We did have a great time watching the vintage aircraft from the Cavanaugh Flight Museum flying in formation in the lovely sunset sky. The fireworks were impressive, too.

Once we managed to find our car, we were trapped in parking garage gridlock for a full hour. Only my youngest's trusty iPod full of music kept us from going stir crazy! Not the same as being marooned on a desert isle, but frustrating all the same.

My gosh! I hope you are watching these images from NASA!

What a fun month this has been!

Deep Throat revealed, and now Deep Impact. At about one a.m. CDT today NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft successfully released its impactor into the path of the pickle-shaped comet Tempel 1. That was just about the time the tiles on the wall surrounding the upstairs bathtub fell off. When I did the major clean of the bathroom Friday, I noticed that the tiles were pulling away from the wall, so it was probably all damp behind them. Swell. That tile wall has been a source of periodic headaches starting when the ceramic soap/washcloth holder fell off three summers ago.

I would like to hurl an 820 lb. washing machine at the tile wall, but it probably wouldn't tell us much about the origin of the solar system. According to NASA's website, the Deep Impact spacecraft is about the size of a VW Beetle. The impactor has been described as the size of a washing machine, or a coffee table. With an impact velocity of 23,000 m.p.h., it could take out a lot of bathroom tile. Scientists expect the crater caused by the impact will be the size of a football field.



In case you think this is the work of Bill Watterson's "Spaceman Spiff", there's really a lot of valuable information to be gained by this mission. David Grinspoon, planetary scientist and author of "Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life," has written a helpful op-ed in today's New York Times:

We stand to learn a lot about impact cratering - one of the major forces that has shaped all the worlds of our solar system. We will also have the chance to peer into the newly formed crater and observe the ice and vapor blasted back into space, thereby learning what lies within this frigid little world. .. Deep Impact will simply make one more small hole in an object that, like all planets large and small, has been repeatedly dinged by colliding space debris since our solar system's origin 4.6 billion years ago. ..It is those dusky beginnings that this experiment can illuminate. Beneath the dirty ice crust of a comet like Tempel 1 is material that has been in deep freeze since the birth of our solar system. Mixed into this timeless frozen treat are organic molecules like those that seeded the young Earth with raw materials for making life. This ice may hold some buried chapters of the story of our origin.

And maybe, just maybe, scientists will discover a material to keep the tiles stuck on the bathroom wall. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Tonight, just as fireworks displays are in full bloom in Dallas, the VW Beetle will be at its closest approach to the pickle.

http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/press/050703jpl.html

On Beyond Swiffer

Last January my sister did her best to brainwash me into joining the cult of Swiffervangelism to which she belongs. Like the causes and creeds of many who have try to bring me into their chosen fold, Swiffervangelism sort of grazed me and bounced off. It's been almost six months, and already I'm on my second package of Wet Swiffer amazing disposable mop cloths. I'll have to buy my second Dry Swiffer on my next trip to the store. At twelve Swiffs per package... six months... I'm up to cleaning the kitchen floor twice a month. Bet that wasn't what either my sister or HomeMadeSimple had in mind.


You could say I just go to church for the music. This is the
Top Three Dry Swiffer Countdown:


This Week's Newcomer to the Charts
Dry Swiffer Hit Number Three

Got a good reason for taking the easy way out
Got a good reason for taking the easy way out now

She was a Dry Swiffer, a one way ticket yea
It took me so long to find out, and I found out

She’s a degreaser, she took me half the way there
She’s a degreaser, she took me half the way there now...

Dry Swiffer, yea
Dry Swiffer, yea



Dry Swiffer Hit Number Two

I told you ’bout living in the u.s. of a.
Don’t you know that I’m a Swiffer of rooms
Let me tell you people that I found a new way
And I’m tired of all this talk about brooms
And the same old story with a new set of words
About the dirt and the lint on the floor
And the times keep on changin’
So I’m keepin’ on top
Of every cat who tracks dirt through my door

I'm a DrySwiffer
Bet you weren't ready for that
I'm a DrySwiffer
I'm sure you know where it's at
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah



Dry Swiffer Top Tune of All Time


DrySwiffer, he's the mop, the mop with the Midas touch
A spider's touch
Such a SlySwiffer beckons you to enter his web of dust
But don't you trust

Golden words he will pour in your ear
The white glove test you needn't fear,
But a mother-in-law proves that she's the SpySwiffer
It's the swiff of death for Mister DrySwiffer


[Having a cleaner kitchen floor still hasn't earned me a ride in 007's Aston Martin.]



So far, Wet Swiffering only has one song, and it is kind of a downer:


WetSwiffer, WetSwiffer,
Mop up that splash,
Dissolve that old chunk
Of congealed goulash.
WetSwiffer, WetSwiffer
Erase that ew-yuk,
And make me a perfect cook (while you're at it)


WetSwiffer, WetSwiffer,
You won't need a pail
To get rid of black heel marks
And sticky spilled ale.
Shine up my floor for I'm longing to be,
The envy of all I see.


What would Dr. Seuss think about Swiffer?
After all, Mr. Sneelock is one of my friends. He'll probably help out doing small odds and ends. Little odd jobs he can do with such ease. Would he do the darn Swiffering if I say, "Please"?

The fine print:

Goldfinger - Artist: Shirley Bassey - peak Billboard position # 8 in 1965 - title song from the James Bond movie starring Sean Connery, Gert Frobe as Goldfinger, Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore, and Harold Sakata as Odd Job - Words and Music by Lesley Bricusse, Anthony Newley and John Barry.

"Space Cowboy" from Brave New World, Steve Miller Band, released June 1969 by Capital Records.

1965 1971