Teaching art with itty bitty students, exploring creativity, finding new passions and purpose, and enjoying the progress of my three greatest works of art out there in the big world.
Mr. and Mrs. Mallard are having some trouble because the water level in the creek is very low. We need rain here, for the ducks, and to ease the grass fire threat all across North Texas. Also to justify my lounging on the couch reading for days at a time.
The ducks' legs are one of my favorite colors. I'm calling it carnelian today. Another day I might call it pimento or coral. I had some gorgeous tights that color just the other day, well, actually in 1969. They went with this outfit and a lovely peach blouse with a fancy ruffled front that was STORE BOUGHT! The wool outfit was lovingly and perfectionistically made by my mother. Fritzi could do amazing things with remnants, but she tended to ignore that wool MAKES ME ITCH. Not that I am bitter! She also knit a sweater vest to match the tights.
The ducks look a tad silly, like first grade soccer players whose socks reach all the way up to their shorts. The Woolly Mammoth's first grade team included a player who will not be named. That boy's socks always went way up in his shorts, but were not enough to protect him from tiny scratches. In a less enlightened time we might have considered this child a wimpy, weenie, cry-baby especially when he wouldn't quit sobbing for the team photo. Get over it!! I think I offered to buy him a Slurpee if he would quit blubbering and say "cheese" so we could all go home.
I saw that kid at a burrito restaurant recently. He is about twenty-four years old, and completely covered with tattoos. He has piercings on every visible surface, and probably some that were hidden, thank heavens. Somewhere over the years his pain tolerance must have risen. Somewhere in this ramble of ducks and needles there's a point.
Itching for a fight, Dad grinned and declined when I suggested he eat at least part of the dinner roll on his meal tray to soak up his two small cups of coffee. He might just as well have said, "who's gonna make me?" We compromised on a third cup of coffee with two creamers stirred in, and then a fourth cup with two creamers and half a sugar packet. That was his nutrition for the day.
Norton the Rabbit did better. He munched on fresh cilantro, mint, and oregano. I took him out to the patio. He went right to his favorite place behind the a/c unit. There's only one skinny route to this spot, and no room for a wide, elderly bunny to turn around and get back out. That means a wide and middle-aged preschool teacher was standing on her head trying to lift a fat rabbit out of the gorge. Norton snorted his tough guy snort, but I still hauled him out of the tight spot and back into his cage.
The outcome was never in doubt. I'm wearing my "Fight Like a Girl" t-shirt from Cary's race against ovarian cancer. I am Rosie the Rabbit Lifter!
Read part of Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture while Dad recaffeinated. I'm enjoying her personal debates about raising a daughter in this consumer culture. So, so thankful to have raised sons! I only had to deal with guns, wars, army, Ninja Turtles, GI Joe, karate chops, paint ball, laser tag, contact sports, knights with swords, and camouflage pants. I spent many years in the Olive Green Aisle at Toys R Us, and only entered the Pink Aisle as a tourist.
When I talk to my sons about discarding childhood possessions, they unanimously demand I not touch the "good wood rifles". Playing with these guns did not turn them into criminals. One son now works at the U.S. Institute for Peace, threatened by Republican budget cuts for heaven's sake!
How did playing with guns influence their imaginations? Along with silver plastic swords, the good wood rifles let the boys play all the way from the Crusades to the Gulf War. They were inspired to read, studied strategy, role-played, negotiated, and crept through the bushes getting fresh air and exercise. They built model tanks and ships. They survived the journey west on the Oregon Trail. They blasted into space and figured out baseball statistics. They developed the visual observation skills to identify aircraft flying overhead, while considering aerial maps and secret codes. They tried to play beyond the range of grown-up eyes.
How do girls play in a tiara-filled, pinkified culture? The preschool girls are distracted by their nail polish and sparkle blush. They play princess, ballerina, butterfly, fairy, and occasionally branch out to shopping, mermaids, manicures, Dorothy, and practice for their post-princess attitude of cool/sassy. They do not play history, sociology, geography, cooperative dramatic play, or problem-solving. They talk about skin moisturizers and own more pairs than Prince Charming ever shoe-horned. They hover nearby, looking constantly for adult reactions, recognition and approval. I am worried. Maybe none of them will grow up to style hair or trade their voice to meet the perfect guy...
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.
School photo day. Half the kids dressed like outrageous paper dolls in impractical, unseasonal outfits by their parents. The other half just hustled in for their turn before the camera before they wipe the inevitable nose goobies through their hair. One boy in a dark corduroy sportcoat over his t-shirt had the look that made me fall in love with my ex. Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man.
Class group photo. Moving the lunchroom benches. Lining up tallest to shortest. What a miracle to get everyone to smile and Ms. Nancy to not blink without crossing the line into laughing chaos. All day expecting a voice mail with the final news of a friend. Snap the picture before I cry.
Staff photo. Six women all rushing to be in the back row. All pushing their glasses higher up their noses.
Radish photos. The first planting of the season in the school garden. Snapping the photos to document kids poking holes in the dirt. The cup of tiny seeds blown over. Praying the watering can bearers would sprinkle and not flood the expectations. Walking away to hear of the tsunami in Japan. Oh, the radish seeds!
I lied to my father. Thursday he let me spoon him the soup from the bowl he kept trying to locate with finger tips that no longer feel. Friday, slapping my efforts away. The aide would take over. I had an appointment, I told Dad.
An appointment with sanity. A date with the creek. A conference with woodpeckers, robins, Mr. Mallard. A wren sighting. A buzz from the PA system. Another buzz. Oh, the warning call of a tiny gray titmouse in gray suit and pointed cap telling me to get lost. Tufted or black-crested? Definitely sharp-dressed.
Clean shirt, new shoes
and I don't know what I am gonna do.
Silk suit, black tie,
I don't need a reason why.
They come runnin' just as fast as they can
cause every girl is crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.
What would the Color Kittens do? There's no green paint! And we are going to learn about pastels in art class tomorrow. Sure, I could mix up the blue tempera with yellow, then add white, but it won't look minty fresh. We will have baby blue, pale pink, melon, butter, lilac, aqua, but we need mint.
So this evening I snarfed a few tater tots off Dad's supper tray and headed to the school supply store. Tomorrow's lesson will be pastel seashells. The kids need to understand "pastel" so they can reinforce the concept for their parents.
Attire for the spring music festival performers is solid pastel shirts with no logos paired with black, brown, or blue pants. That would mean no skirts, shorts, or leggings. Oh, and closed-toe shoes with rubber soles. And no exceptions. What a concept!
It will never happen, but we can try. This is an exasperating era of excess, entitlement, exceptions, and endless entertainment. When children need plush pink camouflage lunchboxes with rhinestones more than they need PB&J sandwiches, carrot sticks, apple slices, and 2% milk, something is askew.
O wonderful kittens! O Brush! O Hush! At last, almost by accident, the kittens poured a bucket of blue and a bucket of yellow together, and it came to pass that they made a green as green as grass. Green as green leaves on a tree. Green as islands in the sea.
So, that is the first and last time I watch Rachel Ray make Moroccan mini meatballs while I iron. The fresh mint and garlic and lamb and zucchini and tumeric and coriander just sounded so rich I had to go spend fifty bucks at Kroger, but I had to substitute ground beef for the lamb.
The mini Moroccan meatballs played billiards in my gut all night. My stomach muscles are in the corner pocket. Little sleep to start the school week.
I got to Dad's room about 3:50. He was watching Judge Joe Brown at high volume and talking very softly. He was back on oxygen with a different machine now from hospice. He was all cattywhoochee in the bed with his feet hanging off, so I went to find his aide to help me pull him back into the center.
Realigned, Dad told me he'd "been selected", that he was "perfect to be interviewed". Then he kept saying, "I think we can go anytime," but also asked me to get him some coveralls. I said he didn't need coveralls, so he asked for a shirt and slacks. He wanted me to pull up with the big red car so we could go to the Home Office. Amen.
Dad's nurse says he is now on two antibiotics, oxygen, and breathing treatments. His doctor saw him on Friday and ordered another chest xray. She saw him again today, according to the hospice social worker. I always seem to be two days behind with information about xrays or meds. I suppose it's the lag between the xray and the results, combined with the weekend staff change.
The nurse said that after the breathing treatment she was suctioning Dad's throat trying to get out a "big glob". Dad didn't want her to get it out. She said he would be able to breathe better. He said he didn't want to breathe better.
In the middle of all this the little old lady who always asks if I have seen Neil started ranting because the bus wasn't there yet. She thinks the nurses station is a bus depot. There is a certain similarity with all the people speaking in tongues, but the floor is less sticky and I'm not so scared to go in the restrooms.
I went back to Dad's room. He was watching Judge Judy and saying how much he liked Judge Judy and Judge Roy Bean and Nancy Grace "even though she is always wrong." Then I got a call from the hospice social worker whose name is, drumroll please:
Eden. I kid you not.
Eden was concerned because we do not have a Texas Out of Hospital Do Not Resuscitate form on file, but now we do. Also, The Five Wishes, Dad's advanced care preference document is not recognized in Texas. Eden says it should be because it is the most detailed directive available.
Eden told me the hospice chaplain had visited Dad today about the same time as his doctor. Maybe the chaplain visit turned into being "selected for an interview". Dad wanted to tell his aide about his "selection" after supper.
I asked Dad if he saw the doctor today. "No time," he said. "I got on the train very early to come to Plano." At some point he also told me he "drove to Schuyler and Plainview". Maybe the sound of the oxygen machine makes him think he's on some mode of transportation.
Dad's supper was the ugliest meal I've seen since we brought him to Plano. Boiled purple cabbage, green peas, gooey bread, red juice (thickened), a scoop of ground ham with yellow gravy on top, vanilla ice cream, and a frosted chocolate brownie. This makes up for the meal with minestrone that looked almost good enough for me to request.
When I tried to feed Dad he slapped at me, so I let him struggle along. It was very sad to watch. He kept flopping over to his right, so he could hardly suck the juice through the straw. I kept propping him up.
I had a little chat with Fritzi and told her I'd done the very best I could for Howie. I just pray that he will get on the bus, Gus, with or without coveralls.
The woodpeckers were wearing nametags and funny hats, drinking beverages with tiny umbrellas, filling the Oak Point Nature Preserve with giddy messages as they hammered out the news. Big flickers, little downies, black and white woodpeckers, bipartisan sapsuckers all going to a party in the tree. P. D. Eastman could have written a book.
(Last weekend the turtles had their convention at the Heard Nature Center.)
I'm spelling relief "H-O-S-P-I-C-E". I tackled the ginormous pile of ironing, and other neglected household tasks this morning. When I got over to see Dad he was a new man! Had the hospice nurse worked magic on him? Maybe, but it seems like two days on antibiotics caused the improvement. Dad was hungry, wide awake, and (avert your eyes, Gentle Readers) needing to read the Sunday newspaper in the bathroom. Dad was, okay, still nutty as a fruitcake, but all the rest was good.
Dad seemed to emerging from a fog. He knew he had been sick. He asked me if I could find the 52nd Street exit ramp because he didn't think he should be out walking around yet. (It's been two years since he walked.) He told me he didn't want to upset my apple cart, and wondered what I had planned for the afternoon. He thought we were driving a van. He drank two cups of coffee. Then he ate some of the turkey, hashbrowns, minestrone soup, juice, roll, chocolate cake, and zucchini.
I'm still in the fog. I've cycled through Funky Winkerbean, Henry Winkler jumping the shark, and Washington Irving to finally reach Rip Van Winkle. Get up! Now is the time for all woodpeckers to get going!
Along the way I remembered riding all the way to Omaha with my sixth grade Sunday School class to see "The Bible: In the Beginning" movie at the Indian Hills Cinerama on Dodge Street. There is a connection, however tenuous. All the way up and back the car radio kept playing the new hit song, "Western Union" by the Five Americans. 1967. Telegrams? Even then it was outdated technology. Check the links above for Sixties flashbacks!
After the Sunday School trip I dutifully reported to my parents that "Adam and Eve were a little obscene." I don't remember anything about Richard Harris playing Cain vs. Franco Nero as Abel. A few months later I would see that pair as King Arthur vs. Lancelot in "Camelot" at the Stuart Theater on 13th Street.
This turtle is not pleased about the blue bag litter in Rowlett Creek. There are only so many battles I can wage at the moment. Sorry, but I have Morse Code and woodpeckers in my head.
*Jumping the shark is a widely used idiom – first employed to describe a moment in the evolution of a television show, characterized by absurdity, when a particular show abandons its core premises and begins a decline in quality that is beyond recovery.
My biggest fear about my June gig as a worm stand-up comic is pronunciation in public. Yes, I worry that I'll say hummus when I mean humus.
I just made this week's hummus. Say it with me: Hummus. It is roasted red pepper, and will be yummy on the Blue Diamond roasted almond Nut Thins.
While the garbanzos were in the blender, I checked on the progress of my worms. They were supposed to be reacting immediately to exposure to the bright sunshine streaming in the laundry room window. They were, ahem, supposed to be rushing to hide under the peanut butter jar lids. They were doing no such thing. In fact I saw one rubbing on Coppertone.
A great deal of research, development, and worm training will go into the We Dig Worms event for a library summer reading program. We will be making nightcrawler towers with layers of sand, dirt, and leaves in peanut butter jars. We may be serving tiny chocolate pudding parfaits with crumbled Oreos on top. There will be worm experiments, vermicomposting instruction, a petting zoo. Thank heavens I have three months to get ready. Need to work with an elocution coach, too! Say it with me: Humus
No cash, but I was a winner on my Presidents' Day final NY taxi ride. Almost as soon as I hugged Danger Baby goodbye and settled into the cab, I started to cry.
"Please take me to La Guardia, and I'll get it together in a minute," I told the driver. "You miss him already," he answered, and handed me a stack of napkins to dab my eyes. "I'm just so proud of him and so fond of his wife," I snurfled between blowing my nose and wiping my eyes.
"Isn't it wonderful when your children are both successful AND happy?," the cabbie asked. "You must be a parent yourself."
"Yes, my son is finishing law school in Connecticut, and my daughter is finishing nurse's training."
In the spring of 2004 I began a blog about my role as an anchor for my parents. I didn't know I would soon be writing about my mother's illness and death, and my father's process through grief and widowhood. When I chose the blog title it didn't occur to me that people would only find it when they wanted info about a tv news anchorwoman's hairdo.
I was an anchor before the blog. I've been an anchor all the time, although I rarely post as AnchorWoman. I'm still the anchor, and I get worn down. Dad is still anchored, but he's ready to cut loose.
Mom's illness and death were during the Woolly Mammoth's senior year of high school. I was looking forward to a time of relaxing, creativity, leisure travel, and maybe blossoming in my empty nest.
I would not change much about the past seven years. Well, yes, there's much I would do differently if I'd known... If I'd seen the questions ahead of time, I might have crammed for the test.
Spent five hours at Dad's skilled care facility today, doing paperwork for his admission into hospice care and meeting his hospice RN. I already love this woman of great good sense, compassion, professionalism, and wisdom in purple scrubs.
To Dad, she is just another person who wants to trap him into answering incorrectly about his birthdate, education, occupation, and family. He is still pouting about having lost the memory of his Social Security number. I hope he will come around soon to sense that she is on his side.
It was lovely walking down by the creek about four p.m. The sun was low to the west bank, backlighting trees and flowers on the east. The blossoms smelled lovely.
I'm so grateful to have hospice added to the team for Dad and for me. Thanks to all the family and friends and readers who send their support and good vibes!
This golden moment is brought to you by my cellphone camera. These anoles are on the yellow tube tunnel of the playground fort. No doubt they are texting each other while they soak up some warming rays. The schoolkids were intrigued and didn't get too close to the lizards. Kids continued to bump and thump inside the tunnel, but the lizards were unperturbed.
My week has been short of slow sun-soaking moments. A friend long ago used to build "lizard on a rock" time into his weekends. I'll try to follow his example before it rains!
I'm as corny as Kansas in August, but nobody ever called me stylish. You might have seen me at the corner of Prince and Elizabeth on the morning of 2/19. I was looking like a traffic cone in my new Polar Tec fleece. My simply stylish color from Lands' End is "watermelon sorbet", or about the hue of a strawberry DQ dip cone.
Starting my first full day in New York City, my son asked if I liked corn. Wul, yuh. But not before coffee. At least two mugs and a hot shower. I stared out at inflated plastic grocery bags floating in air above the twenty-second floor between me and the Empire State Building. There wasn't a moment to waste in the extremely windy sightseeing weekend, but first things first!
We bundled up and walked to the subway for the ride to Cafe Habana in Nolita. This roasted corn on a stick is the specialty of the restaurant, and I could have eaten my weight in this Aztec delight.
I feel like a poster child for Behinder I Get. Maybe Jerry Lewis could host a telethon for me.
We had a pretty good turnout at school Open House, and I'm mighty glad to say no staff members wore gingham kimonos. The carwash and elephant art looked good. Parents discussed the comparative therapeutic values of coin-op and ride-through carwashes. I prefer coin-op, spraying and foaming the Skylark on a sunny day. It makes sense that moms with small children prefer escaping alone to the ride-through on Ladies' Day for the two minutes trapped in the tunnel with no demands. These options should both be included in any health care coverage.
Tuesday I had to stomp my little feet and insist that the nurse call the doctor and report Dad's decline. Both the nurse and aide were substitutes and didn't notice any difference in Dad. Now Dad's had a chest xray, is on oxygen, and receiving breathing treatments. By Wednesday evening he looked almost human and sounded much better. It is still time to arrange hospice, but I have some time to compare the providers available. Plus, I've mobilized an army of grandkids to write letters and send cards to their Gramps. I can go check on him before our staff in-service.
Blogging, 365 photos, taxes, power of attorney aggravations, housework, and the search for comfortable-shoes-to-stand-in-all-day-everyday-and-wear-on-the-playground will have to wait. That is not a heap of clothes waiting to be ironed in front of the t.v. It's interior decorating.
I woke up from a bad dream that we all sewed our own kimonos from gingham or calico using the same Simplicity pattern to wear to School Open House tomorrow night. Penny's was black and white with a lovely matching obi. Mine was pale blue with tiny lavender flowers.
Things are piling up right now and getting shuffled in the dream world. I must have been sewing in the basement of our old house, the one where my dad is mentally roaming looking for some "paintings". We are beginning arrangements for hospice care this afternoon...
Thanks to Kathleen for the Stylish Blogger commendation. Hope to get to it soon!
