Guilt trip through the galaxy averted

Dad wasn't happy to have his picture taken, and underwhelmed about the tater tots, but otherwise looks better than he has in four days. It was nice to find him out of bed and kidding around with Penelope, the aide. This was a huge relief because a call from the speech therapist, at 2:30 made it sound like Dad had pneumonia.

I stopped at CVS to get some bite-size Milky Ways. I was afraid Dad's last words to me would be, "You never brought me the Milky Ways." That would be a heavy guilt trip.

The speech therapist found Dad unwilling to do the swallow test today he had agreed to last week. It is a big jump from there to saying he needs a chest xray right away. Clearly, I need to learn the players in this sit-com.

So far, I am putting my faith in Penelope. I think she could jolly anybody out of a funk, even me.  She wears giant dangly earrings and does an endzone dance before she transfers Dad from his wheelchair to his bed. Dad can't understand everything she says, but she has his full attention.

So, I guess I'll go back to CVS to buy more Depends.  Dad's going to be around awhile.  He likes the White Rock Marathon volunteer shirt I brought him.  If he keeps getting up and looking perky I'll share my favorite DRC Half volunteer shirt!
Maybe tomorrow I'll hang the toy airplane.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Elephant/Not-elephant

Not getting much written about our current art project at school: 

• We are thinking sleepy elephant thoughts.
• We are discovering not-elephants when we find the positions to glue the gray shapes.
• We are wondering what will happen when the mouse squeaks.

• We are looking at negative shapes between the bare January tree branches and around the snowman.
 
• We are aiming for wisdom even when we aren't quite put together right. We are excited to paint tomorrow and learn the recipe for gray.
• We are considering layers of gray while bundled in gray slipper socks and an afghan.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Gonna hang toys from the ceiling

Dad declines to get out of bed again today.  He's wallowing in a pity party that's gone on four days now.  The first week at his new home in Texas he tried pretty hard to figure things out, but then he shut down.  He figured out they will serve all his meals in bed if he acts helpless and hopeless.    

This afternoon I couldn't sit there any longer while he pretended I didn't exist.  I talked to the director of nursing, and turned it over to the professionals.  They can cajole him and emphatically encourage him to get up in his wheelchair and out to the dining room, and it won't be all my fault. 

Among the many things Dad doesn't want--photos of family, a radio, the tv on, to look out the window, to have the light on, a warmer shirt, to go outside, activities, therapy, zucchini--pictures on the wall stands out.  Okay, then, Mr. I-Am-Not-Depressed!  I'm going to hang toy airplanes, mobiles, papier mache butterflies. and wire sculptures from the ceiling.  If that won't get him out of bed, I'll take the last surviving trapeze artist from The Flying Pig Circus over to Dad's room. 

Excuse me while I pull my hair out.  Putting Led Zep in the cd player.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Von Trapp Family mangled

[This is not a story of mayhem.]

 
We had a lovely day of rain turning to snow in North Texas.  I watched the snow with Dad, and read tidbits from the Sunday paper aloud.  He eventually requested the sports section and the Parade magazine, and perused them without squinting. 

 
The weather outside is frightful, but the roses are delightful.  The timing is unfortunate.  With this being Sunday afternoon I have little hope for a "snow day" tomorrow.  The big fat flakes are almost gone.


Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

The roses at the condo entrance look magical in their snow bonnets.  I was humming about snowflakes on roses and whiskers on mittens plus great Keystone Koppers while I snapped these photos.  Dad had just opined loudly out of the blue that the Plano police are just a bunch of Keystone cops.  Where on earth did he get that?  He's only been in town a week!


Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things

My sister's choir rode around Austria in a bus with an ad for the Trapp Family Singers on the side, or some such story.  I probably have the details skewed, but she did go to Austria with her choir, and we did talk about "The Sound of Music" last weekend.  She was reading the autobiography of Agathe Von Trapp to learn the real story of the family compared to the movie.

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things

The 1965 movie didn't work for me.  It was a goatherd problem.  Even at age ten I didn't like things too sugar-coated.  I had been listening to the original Broadway cast album with Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel for eons by then.

In 1963 my grandma Halma and I received tickets to see the touring Broadway show at Lincoln's Stuart Theater.  What a Christmas present!  We sat "in the loge".  It was a major event of my childhood.  It was snowing.  Dad couldn't find a parking place for the '54 Chevy, so he let his mother and I out by the Miller & Paine department store to walk across "O" Street to the theater.  We stepped across the steam vents in the sidewalk.  I'm pretty sure we wore overshoes--the better to cross the Alps!

My parents had seen the travelling Broadway show at Omaha's Music Hall in the spring of 1961.  Florence Henderson starred as Maria.  I know this because I have the programs my mom saved.

The big red dictionary says "in the loge" is "in the front rows of a theater's mezzanine".  Magical words and places for a young girl. 

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Hot time, winter in assisted living

Dad's keeping his thermostat at seventy-four degrees, while staying under his comforter or wearing a sweatshirt.  As well as entering a new phase in the father-daughter relationship, I may have crossed a new line of hormonal weirdness.  Feeling queasy in Dad's tropical nursing home terrarium at seventy-four, I got home and shivered at sixty-nine degrees.  Walking by the creek without a jacket at fifty-five feels perfect.  Back inside and wrapped in an afghan with a fire in the fireplace, seventy-two feels polar.

Is this some cosmic utility payback for my nagging of Black Hills Energy for the refund on Dad's averaged gas bill?  Or maybe post-menopausal mindgames? 

Summer in the City

(The Lovin' Spoonful)

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Bedside book chat

The stack by the alarm clock grows alarmingly.  My Kindle is loaded.  Roadtrips with audio books should be fewer in 2011 now that my dad is nearby. 

Wait!  I Have a Blog tells of all the books Kathleen and her bookshop customers are reading and why.  I feel like a literacy slug.  Sure, I read lots of book reviews in Library Journal and ALA Booklist at one job.  I try to read Medicare handbooks for my unofficial job.  I read children's books aloud five days a week, reminding me of the power of that experience for all participants. 

Maybe I need to read aloud to Dad.  He is bored.  His eyes can't track print across a page now, so he can't read.  He is tired of all television, even sports.  He never had any patience with fiction.  He can't hear very well.  I'll sleep on this idea.  If I ask him what he'd like to hear, he will say "nothing".  I will have to just begin.



What do I read, and why?  I read Clive Cussler, Dwell magazine, and the NY Times on airplanes.  Why?  Because that's what I was reading when I realized I wasn't nervous about flying anymore.  Same reason I always drink tomato juice or Bloody Mary mix during the on-flight beverage service, too.  Silly, but still.


Organized by Danger Baby's fiance and Speech-Debate's wife, my sons and their loving ones, gave me a Kindle last spring.  I like it, and will use it even more with my new Mighty Bright MiniFlex LED eReader Light.  Read on Kindle in '10:

• Following the Water:  A Hydromancer's Notebook--Why?  Because the Woolly Mammoth's girlfriend knows I like nature writing.
• The Poisonwood Bible--because I always planned to, but never got around to it.
• Moby Dick--because my curiosity was piqued by the Dallas Opera's premiere of a Moby Dick opera.
• Elmore Leonard's Djibouti--because I don't want Leonard to go off and die like Donald Westlake and George MacDonald Fraser.  That boy can write dialogue.  A great for-no-reason gift from Danger Baby.
• King Solomon's Mines, by H. Rider Haggard-- because it was free, plus Amelia Peabody, Indiana Jones, and Howard Carter are some of my favorite people.

What's loaded into the Kindle for '11? 

• Last Call, by Daniel Okrent
• The Alexiad, by Anna Comnena--gifts from Speech-Debate and his wife.
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• The Prisoner of Zenda--Freebies for filling in the gaps in my education.
• Anna Karenina--because of the hedgehog.

The last two books I read were Nora Ephron's I Remember Nothing from my sister, and The Hare With Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal, from the library.  The first was lightweight name-dropping, and not as funny as hoped.  The second was slow-going and worth every minute in gaining a new understanding of art history, Europe in the 20th Century, anti-Semitism, attention to detail, and memoir-writing.  Highly recommended.

This is the year I will read:

• King Lear--because of elderly fathers and daughters and Stephanie Kallos at work on Novel #3
• New World Kids: The Parents' Guide to Creative Thinking, by Susan Marcus and Susie Monday--Why?  We've got to change the way we teach because children are increasingly low-initiative and low-empathy, even as they over-stimulated and over-scheduled.  And because Mr. and Mrs. Danger Baby gave me an Amazon gift card.
• Sightings, by Sam Keen--spiritual discovery through bird-watching found on the donation shelf at the library!
• More cookbooks and books about cookbooks.  Arto der Haroutunian's classic Vegetarian Dishes from Across the Middle East spent months on my kitchen table inspiring my meals with new flavor combinations.  Cooking for one can be very dull without fresh inspirations.  Field guides to birds, insects, trees, butterflies, and geology will continue to linger on several desks.

Memorable fiction held in my hands in 2010:

• One Amazing Thing, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
• People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks
• The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane
• Mink River, by Brian Doyle
• The Last Dickens, by Matthew Pearl

Fascinating audio books in 2010:

• Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery--because Steph knew I would enjoy it! 
• Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver--Some parts more interesting than others. 
• Homer and Langley, by E. L. Doctorow--Intriguing while I cleaned out my father's house.  How do you spell "hoarding"?
• Shadow Divers, by Robert Kurson--Suggested by Esther at the library, I found myself driving down the highway breathing along with the scuba tank regulators.  Check it out for your next trip.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Across--Small Stone #5

Crossed Custer in search of treasure,
chrysalis or chickadee
calm found in other forms

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Midge not Barbie

Midge models her 1961 red prom dress on the bathroom counter. All night I searched for the perfect prom dress in Barbie's Fashion Shop, with frustrating REM side-trips to Gateway Mall. 

A legendary Oklahoma lawmen invited me to prom.  Not Bill Tilghman.  Not Chris Madsen.  Must have been Heck.

Surfacing too quickly from the depths when the alarm clock squawked, I got the bends.  I could only remember two of the Three Guardsmen, Bill Tilghman and Chris Madsen.  The legendary Oklahoma lawman whose name escaped me was the necessary one.  Heck.

Heck asked me to prom.  No, he asked my friend, really, but what was his name?  So out comes the high school yearbook.  John Heck was class of '73.  Heck Thomas was the lawman.  Our high school economics teacher died this week, well not Heck Thomas's.  The obit didn't mention economics.  And then there's the matter of the apostrophe S.  A real bad day in the making!  To make sure of it, NPR broadcast a feature on irritable bowel syndrome during breakfast. I'm gonna order the Three Guardsmen to haul NPR into the Guthrie jail.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Curvature--small stone #4

Stopped, stooping
to peer
in shadows could have
been a spine,
shed snakeskin,
armadillo tail.
With quiet leaves
just then I hear the wren.

scoliosis
1706, from Mod.L., from Gk. skoliosis "crookedness," from skolios "bent, curved," from PIE base *(s)qel- "crooked, curved, bent, perverted."

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Small stone #3

Brochures from Dad's new place.  Elephant for today's art project.  More on the project later, I hope.



© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Small stone #2

White rooster milkweed hair
Wild nap dreams
Transients, barber ladies, questions
Combing a way out of confusion

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Small stone #1

Dark woman
Garish kiosk
Short long dog
Voluptuous sky

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Hey! there, Hi! there, Hare! brained

Ho! there.  Sitting with Dad this afternoon, I suddenly wondered whether I had blogged about "hair-brained daughters" or "hare-brained" ones.  Which was right?  What could it hurt to ask Dad?

Howie voted for hair-brained.  I leaned toward hare-brained.  The preschool class rabbit is a wonderful pet, but Norton isn't a rocket scientist.  This led Dad to wonder aloud if I would trim his nose hairs.  He came to his senses, though.

Dad's temper can be hair-trigger when he's had it up to here with his hare-brained daughters.  Yes, he responds to the slightest provocation when we are giddy and flighty.

C!  See you real soon.
Y!  Why?  Because we like you.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Heading out at seven a.m.

Two staff members boosted Dad out of his wheelchair and up into the SUV well before dawn Thursday.  We disassembled Dad's customized wheelchair and folded it, lifting it on top of all the stuff in the back to obscure any view in the driver's rear mirror.  Couldn't really sort stuff and discard it in front of Dad, as he was already plenty anxious, so we had way more than would fit in his new room.

Dad was not the only anxious one.  No one looks forward to 650 miles in the dead of winter, twelve hours, who knows how many Depends changes of an angry, demented, frail parent prone to coughing and choking.  We had lowered our expectations so far that the slightest good fortune felt like winning the lottery.  We had danced to learn there was no road construction south of Wichita, and that temps would stay above freezing the whole trip.

On my solo trips home after visiting Dad at the Care Center, York is the breakaway point, when I break out of the gravitational pull.  Take the ramp off I-80, wipe away tears, and head south on Highway 81.

This trip, York felt like the fail-safe point.  Beyond it we were fully committed.  No turning back.  Damn the torpedoes.  Full speed ahead.


The sunrise was a gorgeous emergence of rusty rose, then pure gold from the gray clouds.  In the back seat, I faced the sunrise.  In the front, Dad looked straight ahead or slightly to the west.  Rarely taking his eyes off the road, rarely speaking, Dad held his anxiety tight inside. It would be 500 miles before he flipped out and railed against being captive of his hairbrained daughters.



© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Do not follow produce into that good night

I offer a motto on this 2011 New Years Day: 

Never follow a pick-up truck loaded with large fruits and/or veggies. 

This guiding principle for life's journey came to me a dozen years ago on an I-35 entrance ramp in Austin, TX.  My eldest son, Speech-Debate, had just spent a few days at the University of Texas attending an honors colloquium for high school seniors.  The other two guys and I drove down to collect him.  Heading home we pulled onto the Interstate behind a pick-up filled with cantaloupes.  Melons started bouncing out of the truck bed and onto the highway, all around our Buick.  Boing-guh, boing-guh, boing-guh!

During this week's long road trip bringing Dad to Texas, we were stuck behind a white pick-up truck carrying watermelons.  Nine hours into a twelve-hour drive Dad discovered the Jeep Commander's passenger side sun visor. He could reach it and maneuver it to the side window and back. The low sun blazed into my eyes, and out, leaving trails like Sixties Kodak flashbulbs. The Arbuckles added intermittent deep purple shadows between flashes. The pick-up's cargo added the threat of imminent watermelon attack. One hill I got ahead of the pick-up. The next I was back behind the danger.  Post Traumatic Cantaloupe Syndrome made it very scary.  Repeat.  Repeat.

My sister and I preferred to compare our four-state drive to Thelma and Louise, but Rodney Dangerfield and Chevy Chase popped to mind. In 1986's Back to School, Rodney Dangerfield's character is inspired by Sally Kellerman's reading of a Dylan Thomas poem .  Nobody will mistake this for a cinema classic, but it was my introduction to the poem:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And against following the watermelon!
 © 2010 Nancy L. Ruder