depredations and depravity

This week's duel between book and audio book is almost as strange as last week's.  My choices are unusually gory for me, but work as restorative escapism seriously needed.

I can't seem to quit reading The Hypnotist even though there are no likeable characters, the crimes are incredibly gruesome, and the writing makes me feel like I have a groggy flu.  That could be the effect of a collaboration read in translation, or maybe I should take my temperature.

In the car, I can't log enough miles listening to Empire of the Summer Moon.  Since the audio book has eighteen cds, it may run longer than my old Buick has miles left.  The history of the Comanches and Quanah Parker is also full of  torture of captives and horrible cruelty.

Both books are full of depredation, deprivation, and depravity.  I hauled out the Big Red Dictionary, but to save time this morning I'll go with the Online Etymology Dictionary information:

• depredation   late 15c., from M.Fr. déprédation, from L.L. depraedationem (nom. depraedatio) "a plundering," from pp. stem of L. depraedari "to pillage," from de- "thoroughly" (see de-) + praedari "to plunder," lit. "to make prey of," from praeda "prey" (see prey).
• deprave   late 14c., "corrupt, lead astray, pervert," from O.Fr. depraver (14c.) or directly from L. depravare "distort, disfigure;" figuratively "to pervert, seduce, corrupt," from de- "completely" (see de-) + pravus"crooked." Related: Depraved; depraving.
• depravity   1640s; see deprave + -ity. Earlier in same sense was pravity, from L. pravitas.
• deprivation   mid-15c., "removal from office or position," from M.L. deprivationem (nom. deprivatio), noun of action from pp. stem of deprivare (see deprive).
• deprived   1550s, "dispossessed," pp. adj. from deprive. As a euphemism for the condition of children who lack a stable home life, by 1945.

So, in this literary week of plunder and perversion, I will close with two lighter notes.  First you may need the lyrics for "Dear Officer Krupke" from "West Side Story".

DIESEL: (Spoken, as Judge) In the opinion on this court, this child is depraved on account he ain't had a normal home. 

  ACTION: (Spoken) Hey, I'm depraved on account I'm deprived.   

Second, it pleased me no end to hear that my neighbor's little girl somehow got her Halloween wig stuck in a ceiling fan. These things happen!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Sensory dep

Pinned new posters on Dad's nursing home room walls.  He had been looking at Georgia O'Keeffe and Richard Diebenkorn for months with no say in the matter.  Dad says nothing about most matters when he has the option. His eyes seem to be sucking new input data from these posters, or else he has gone blind.  I'm never sure.  He seems to be staring at the art, but not looking at his supper while he tries to feed himself with both hands at once.   With his right he lifts the coffee mug and tries to get the straw between his lips while simultaneously attempting to maneuver a teaspoon of chicken dumpling soup with his left.

I just play the part of the trampoline spotter, keeping my eye out so Dad doesn't slide off the bed or spill hot coffee on himself.  An ancient episode of M*A*S*H shows on the TV. Hot Lips needs an appendectomy.  Colonel Potter's horse is constipated. My brain is running in the background like a slow-moving antivirus scan trying to visualize tomorrow's clay project with the preschoolers.  My brain is grumpy because I haven't downloaded and installed either the important or optional updates.

Dad is pushing buttons on the TV remote.  He doesn't look at the gizmo in his hands.  He has no feeling in his fingertips.  The TV image is grainy, but the volume is high.

The posters are teaching materials, not nice museum prints.  One an arrangement of musicians as depicted by Matisse, Picasso, and Romare Beardon.  The other a boogie-woogie of traffic scenes, Mondrian paintings, and piano keys.  Dad is either looking or not seeing.  Clearing his throat with loud growls and hollers, but nothing to say in this matter.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Optical high jinks

 

Molasses stickiness on the lazy Susan started a cupboard cleaning attack. Before long the spice jars and three bottles of vanilla extract were all over the kitchen counter surrounding the colander.

I love this colander.  Picked it out as a gift for my mother in about 1969.  The orange/yellow/navy enamel wasn't really right for Mom's Mondrian color scheme preferences.

All those circle jar lids, circle oranges, and circle strainer holes demanded their camera moment. The images were an eye-popping op-art experience reminiscent of old Kodak flash cube afterimages.  If you want to feel a bit dotty and spotty, look at these photos, then look away to a white screen.

By the way, I worry about Kodak.  I sure don't miss the film camera process, just those plastic film cans with snap on lids.  They were so very useful.  As for George Eastman, the Kodak founder was a kid just like me once upon a time in those "Childhood of Famous Americans" books.  George Eastman, Young Photographer was one of many in the series I read at Eastridge Elementary.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Snake needs Ben-Gay

"Bad commute, Honey.  Where's the heating pad?"

"Poor baby, what happened?"

"I was on Caddo Trail waiting for the left turn light, and some big dumb art teacher stepped right on the middle of my back. She said she was looking at the fall leaves."

"Did she say she was sorry?"

Very.  And a wee bit freaked.  Her Reptiles of Texas book is at school.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Wueƨsday all week long

Trouble was, it was Wueƨsday right after Tuesday in the preschool class.


Then it was Thutƨbay, quite an Osterized day, chopped and pureed. Ranger fans felt they had been through the blender by the time Game Six was over.

When my blender went to appliance heaven, I decided to try an immersible blender this time around.  Never could get all the hummus out of the old blender around the blades.


The school Halloween celebration was Friday, or Friboy if you are still reading the preschool writing on the white board.  Girls in attendance:


Queen
Ariel mermaid
Princess Barbie
3 Rapunzels, although one called it Carpuntsel.  
Kimono princess
Rodeo princess
Sequined singer
Leopard ballerina
Princess fairy
Minnie Mouse
Gypsy girl
Clown
Ladybug
Batgirl (superhero, not baseball assistant)
"Army sister"


Boys:


Dragon ninja
Darth Vader
Transformer
Ninja turtle
Football player
Fireman
Orange pumpkin


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Black and white and red all over

Not able to post much because I cannot put down Erin Morgenstern's novel, The Night Circus. The book reminds me of trying to catch the spot images after a Kodak flash photo when I was a little kid. Birthday parties were so simple then. Kids chase optical spots from flash photography. Kids create static electricity rubbing balloons on their hair. Kids play "Drop the Handkerchief" and "Musical Chairs".


This photo is of the likely last canna bloom of the fall. My many cannas were slashed, bent, and broken in the weekend midnight hailstorm, so I was pleased to find a bloom emerging fresh from the wreckage.

The storm was a stunning display of black and white, just right for a reader deep in the novel.  Sunday afternoon Act III of the Dallas Opera's "Lucia di Lammermoor" had a strobe lightning storm that tried but couldn't match nature.  Lucia won with her mad scene duet with the flute, though. See part of it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfgOPNXWU2I




© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Reading the signs, shaking them off

Ironing my shirts through game two of the World Series.  I was going to have to iron slacks if the game went into extra innings.  Like the managers and catchers, preschool teachers have unspoken signs to communicate across distances.  There's the "Please cough into your elbow" sign, and the "Don't pick your nose--icky" series of signals that ends with the "wash your hands with soap" pantomime.

My Chicken Little student has extreme difficulty retrieving the names of things from his brain.  All week he has been doing an initial sound work about Y.  Yuh, yuh, yuh, yellow, yarn, etc.  The major challenge is the egg yolk.  Each time he brings me the picture card he says, "Yuh, yuh, yuh, silk thread."  Y, Y, Y, oh, why does this five year-old boy even have "silk thread" on his brain spool?  I want to crack an egg on his head instead of an acorn.

There's lots of room for confusion with the signs and signals I get from my father.  He speaks very little,and the associations are difficult to place in context.  He makes up and down lines with his index fingers pointing at the end of bed.  He closes his eyes in exhaustion and frustration with his clueless daughter.  Finally he says "stick".  Later he says, "straws" and "stand".  In the middle of the night I wake up realizing he wants his cane or his walker so he can try again to escape.  He is not really talking about the three little pigs building their houses.

In the Buick I'm listening to a cd of Norman Maclean's Young Men and Fire.  It is painful to get out of the car and leave the storytelling, so clear, so ordered, so profound.  I want to keep driving, perhaps all the way to Missoula.

Once inside, I am reading Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus.  It also pulls me into a fantastic world that is painful to leave.  So I sit beside Dad as he naps and remain in the black and white tent.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Crackerdog and flop-bott

My hairdresser's son "collects malti-poos and doesn't want to have kids", she tells me.  Scary Hair Tammi doesn't know it has been a multi-poop week in the preschool class, and I'm unsure why anyone has kids at this point.  I keep a straight face.  She is just informing me the little girl asleep in the lobby is not her grandchild.

My art students have been creating dog art since the beginning of the fall semester.  Our grand collaboration on a Go, Dog. Go! mural was the culmination timed for Thursday's Open House Night.  I encouraged students to bring photos of their dogs to create a border around the mural. We were just starting the border in this photo, but soon memorial photos started coming in faster than photos of stoic pets dressed in doll clothes and Mardi Gras beads.

When we started the mural I didn't know my dad would be trying to climb the ladder to a big dog party in his states of considerable agitation all week.    I didn't know a blogger friend would be letting go of her family pet.  Adding to the emotion, a preschooler's dog died last weekend.

I just wanted us to find good links between quality picture books, making art, and talking about art.  Interest, integration, imagination, invention... all those great i words for connecting art and stories. Now we were also processing early encounters with mortality, using art to record and commemorate.  Where did those dogs go?  Why were they going fast in those cars?  Why does P. D. Eastman's book help me in this time of stress and sadness as much as James Herriot's All Things Great and Small?

We had a lively discussion about George Rodrique's "Blue Dog" paintings in all the groups.  One of the questions is always, "How do you think Blue Dog is feeling?"  Blue Dog is often stressed but immobile, anxious and stuck.

In James Herriot's dog stories, the young vet is often torn about lecturing Mrs. Pumphrey on the hazards of overfeeding her Pekingese dog. Tricki Woo has a condition called "flop- bott", also known as impacted bowels, and experiences episodes of "crackerdog", zooming around like to a preschooler on a Coco-Puffs rush.




In the workplace stress department, we had a big flop-bott over whether to serve little paper cups of crackers and green grapes at Open House. Those dogs are not going to get cracker-grapes.

 © 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

A dinosaur in the late afternoon woods

Excuse me. For just a second there on the Willow Springs/Rowlett Creek Trail I thought a two and a half year old was with me. He had his spear, and was keeping a sharp look-out for a brontosaurus or maybe T-Rex. They live in the woods, you know, so you have to go hiking to find them.

True, that little fella is old enough to have his own hiking companion one of these days, and has probably stopped looking for extinct animals. I'm almost teary remembering that on one of those hikes we actually came around the bend and found a buffalo blocking our trail.

Having demanded hundreds of readings of Peter Spier's Gobble, Growl, Grunt, my son wanted the buffalo to say, "BALLOOOOW!"  We were on a trail near our rented primitive fishermen's cabin in Custer State Park, South Dakota, 1985.


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Liking the lichen

Good walks the last few days have helped my outlook.  Editing the photos from the walks is great for clearing out the mental debris of the workday.

Real autumn whooshed in on a cold front last evening, dropping the temp thirty degrees.  Real sweater weather at last!

Here is our new favorite nature picture book:

Bill Martin, Jr. and Lois Ehlert's Ten Little Caterpillars.

Must get ready for work.


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Bring the Caddie around

Dad had a haircut Monday.  That meant he had to don pants to ride in his wheelchair to the onsite beauty shop. That took a lot out of him as did seeing his reflection in the big mirror. It has been a couple months at least since he had that experience.  His hair is still a lovely billowing white straight out of a milkweed pod.

The chaplain called me Thursday, just delighted with himself  now that Howie listens to Psalm 23, mouths the words to the Lord's Prayer, and says "thank you" out loud.  Chaplain Bob spoke to Dad about heaven this week, and about how the Lord has a house there for Howie to live forever. I hope the Lord has doors on the bathrooms. 




Friday evening Dad was all scratched up.  The nurse and I worked together to cut his fingernails.  Next time I will bring Madge and her dishwashing liquid for a soak.  Those nails were shooting around the room like shrapnel.


Spent an emotionally and physically exhausting hour with Dad Saturday. Found him half off the bed.  Went to find help, and we got Dad situated back in bed.  The nurse said Dad had been agitated all day. Wondering if the pants are the mischief makers. I explained to the weekend team that they do not need to dress Dad in pants since he never gets out of bed. Pants are a lot of extra work, and maybe the pants make Dad think he is going somewhere.


I got Dad sitting up in bed enough to feed him.  All he wanted to do was point at the window.  I closed the blinds because of the glare.  I reopened them.  Raised them.  Lowered them.  Nothing was right for Dad.

He had some chicken broth, coffee with milk through a bendy straw, potatoes, applesauce, and something that might have been quiche. After the usual round of coughing, Dad started saying "first floor windows".  I raised the blind and pointed out the day care center, the other senior home, the cars in the parking lot.  He started getting out of bed again.  I put him back in twice more.  He was holding my hand so tight he was crushing my fingers.

Dad told me to "drive the Cadillac up."  Then I was to boost him out the first floor window into the Caddie.  

Right!  Right, as Bill Cosby would say to God, what's a cubit?  What Caddie? 

We went round and round about this.  I told Dad I would not open the "first floor window", and encouraged him to get ready for sleep.  He kept pulling himself half out of bed.  I kept putting him back in.  Took the darn pants off, then his shirt, and dressed him in his hospital nightgown.  Kissed his forehead and told him "nighty night".  






Dad was still ordering me to open the window.  Finally told him if he was going out the window he would jolly well have to do it himself because I was going home.  I briefed the weekend supervisor.  She asked where Dad thought he would go once he got out the window.  I told her I blamed it on Chaplain Bob talking to Dad about heaven.  Howie is either going to fly out the window with angels or take the highway to hell.  It says right there in my owner's manual that you can't drive a 1996 Buick Skylark to either extreme.



Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death from near to far, I would rather take a car!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Predictive text = more evidence of the apocalypse OR potatoes au gratin

My friend in the hospital after double bypass heart surgery is sending messages via some dumb smart electronic device.  The messages pop up in my Hotmail, and make very little sense.  When I write asking about french toast for breakfast, his reply is about irises.  When I mention those fetching backless hospital gowns, I get back "The gown and precipitous  are going home with me.."  What is going on?


Have Holmes and Moriarty wrestled on the brink of the Reichenbachless Hospital Gown Falls?  Shouldn't modern technology clarify communication?   My backless friend just wants to take his souvenir pee cup home from the hospital to have it bronzed, and he is willing to pay the out-of-network/out-of-pocket price for this relic.  Why is technology pushing him over the cliff?

Come on baby, do the disambiguation with me, but not in your hospital gown.





© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Can't blame it on the heat wave

With cooler temps and even, gasp, significant rainfall, a fungal ugliness is showing itself.  Bad mushrooms and predatory slime molds are manifesting in places of employment.  It's enough to kill the old king in Babar.  Just by the way, my brother-in-law was so traumatized by that story he still won't eat mushrooms and he's over fifty.

Actually, science shows that slime molds cooperate better than many groups of workplace "team members".

We were so psychically pulled down just trying to get through each blistering day of the record-breaking hellish summer that comparatively petty, but consistently disrespectful behavior had to be ignored and pushed under the rug for survival.  

Now it's flagrant, and spores are being released. Old photos from my files are helping me put the fun back in dysfungtional and the like back in lichen.  Just don't make me read Babar.  Never did like that dude. 

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Runzas rethought

This was a very good batch of runzas, probably because I kept it simple.

Dough

Save All brand frozen bread dough from Albertsons.  I put three loaves in a big ziplock bag in the fridge overnight to thaw.   Preheated oven to 150 then turned off.  Oiled a very large stainless steel mixing bowl.  Put the three loaves in the bowl and set it in the oven.  Boiled 2 cups water in an ovenproof bowl and set that in the oven.  Waited two hours.

Filling


Meanwhile brown in a very big skillet, then drain off fat:
1 lb ground pork from Sprouts
1/2 lb ground beef (80/20)
2 stalks of celery minced
[1 onion finely chopped]

Add in:
1 bag of shredded cabbage (intended for cole slaw)--this is a big time-saver
Lots of fresh ground pepper
Salt if your blood pressure allows
1/2 c sauerkraut if you want to add more tang
[I've added other seasonings in the past, but this was better.]

When the cabbage is wilted cover skillet and lower heat to simmer until dough has risen.  Turn off burner.

Remove pans from oven.  Punch down dough.  Preheat oven to 350.  Grease two baking sheets.  I used my mom's heavy old Ovenex sheets that have a dimpled texture.

Flour board and rolling pin.  Pull off a lump of dough a bit bigger than a golf ball, billiards?  Roll it out to a 6" diameter circle.  Move the circle to a plate, letting it stretch a bit during transport.  Scoop about 1/3 c filling onto circle of dough.  Fold the dough over the filling, overlapping and pinching just slightly, north, south, east, west.  Gently turn the vaguely rectangular bundle over onto the baking sheet.  Place bundles 1/2" apart.

This dough made sixteen runzas.  I froze the leftover cup or so of filling to add into a future batch.  Bake 30 minutes.  Brush lightly with melted butter to make a pretty golden top.


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Feeling so so so much better, but who's counting?

A three day weekend

Feel free to copy and paste one into my life any time.  Well, not so often as to make me join the ranks of the unemployed.  Just often enough to help me stay a tiny bit sane in the ranks of the 99.5% overworked and underpaid!

Saturday I finished my autumn celebration care packages for my sons and daughters-in-law.  Got the Chex Mix back on track after the melted margarine disaster, found baskets for the sewn napkins, picked up some orange twinkly light strings, and bought the packs of Seneca Apple Chips at Tom Thumb.

Sunday I Goldilocks tested all the boxes I've accumulated for shipping, but then had to go buy boxes and bubble wrap at Target.  Monday got those boxes shipped, so my sons will have their Chex Mix by next weekend's football games.

Made runzas, the national food of Nebraska.  Took some hot out of the oven over to share with Dad at the nursing home while we watched the Rangers/Tigers game.  Although he kept saying, "baseball channel 44," reading a reminder I posted on his bulletin board, he didn't really watch the game. He had a few bites of his runza.

After the second inning it was time to get Dad up and into his wheelchair to visit the on-site beauty shop.  Yikes.  Dad needed to wear some pants. When we got to the beauty shop, Dad had trouble tilting his head back for the shampoo.  It seemed harder for him to comprehend his reflection in the mirror.  How do we process our own aging and decline?  As long as we see ourselves in the mirror everyday, the incremental changes are barely perceptible.

Rain.  So very glad for the rain.  Wonderful to sleep upstairs nearer the skylight, hearing the rain in my sleep.
Played with a few rain photos, cropping and turning them like quilt squares.

Never thought much about what happens when you fill your gas tank now that gas is momentarily below $3/gallon, but then your gas pump goes flopbot.  How do the mechanics carefully unhook and lower the full gas tank out of the way to replace the gas pump?  The darn thing is very heavy and unwieldy, and probably flammable.  A good story, but glad it wasn't my Buick!

Now, let's do the weekend numbers:

nature hike /
UPS Store /
Walmart /
Michaels /
Target /
professional development workshop /
professional development self-guided study /
Rangers lead the Tigers by // games
Sonic //  [Had a serious craving for chili cheese coney dogs with mustard, but I'm all over it now.]
chats with the great gal at the auto repair shop ///
looming tasks completed ////
nursing home visits /////
grocery store visits /////
times restarted Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 ///// /////
text messages ///// ///// //
blobs of bread dough made into runzas ///// ///// ///// /


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder