Recipe googling is addictive

I wanted to make a salad with red potatoes and fresh rosemary, because I had these ingredients and didn't want to run to the grocery store. I'm making the salad for a staff birthday luncheon tomorrow. Googling by the two items on hand led to an evening reading recipes online. So many choices! Hot potato salad with roasted garlic-infused mayo. Another with roasted pine nuts and red peppers. This is sounding soooo good. If reading recipes keeps me from actually eating, I will lose weight, right?

While checking out a potato salad with fresh rosemary AND thyme (another ingredient I had on hand) at Two Fat Als blog, I got diverted into a consideration of radish-cucumber-beet salad. The power of the Web recibe is almost as strong as the Dark Side. Cucumbers make me burp and I don't like radishes. I haven't eaten beets since building towers with the canned diced beets of 1961. But the colorful photos make me ready to drive across a desert to find the ingredients.

When I came out of the desert into the air-conditioned and tastefully-lit Tom Thumb grocery store, they were all out of fresh beets. But they did have a jicama. Jicama in hand, I headed home to google new recipes.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Rain Forest Convenience Store

Life is what happens while we are standing there with Robert Frost. The roads diverge and we’re just wondering which is the quickest to a gas station with a clean restroom.

There are different routes between Dallas and Nebraska's capital city, but for just getting it done and getting there, Interstate 35 is best. The gas station with a clean restroom is sometimes a challenge, so I'm pleased to report my discovery of the clean and cute Rainforest Convenience Store/Conoco in Ardmore, OK. Many miles have passed since then, but I think the exit was number 32, or 31B, near the intersection of 12th Ave NW and Rockford Rd N.

Maybe I've just never seen a gas station with a theme, but my brief stop cheered me up. The interior was nice and jungly. It was too early in the day to visit the Bat Cave walk-in beverage cooler, though. I marched back to the Buick wearing an imaginary pith helmet and carrying a mental machete for my expedition north.

Danger Baby has recommended summer reading for me. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann, sounds just my style. I've promised myself a long read and then a nap this holiday.

The past couple months have offered many opportunities to second guess decisions and choices as we three siblings helped our elderly father in Nebraska. On the drive home I struggled to recall a poem I once had memorized. So here is Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken":


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.


© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Diesel fumes and pancake syrup

Real guys love real trucks, even if the guys are only 24-months old. Had a hoot doing toddler storytime today at the library. Rhymes, finger plays, and cute illustrated picture books were all good. We made "vroom" sound effects and turned imaginary steering wheels. But when I showed the non-fiction book with large glossy full-color photos of actual dumptrucks hoisted to spill their loads the toddler males rushed the stage! Imagine a mosh pit with raisins and cheerios...

I know the "real" truck books my sons loved are long out-of-print. I'm pretty sentimental about the years our family considered the truckstop cafe a five-star restaurant with a scenic view of tractor-trailers and diesel pumps. Plus, breakfast was served any hour of the day or night.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Enquiring Minds Want a Stubby Update

Stubby's tail is growing back slowly. The little green anole is pleased that the paparazzi are gone, perhaps to cover Michael Jackson's death. Actually, I can't catch Stubby in action because I dropped my camera on Dad's basement floor and jammed the telescoping lens. Digital photography withdrawal isn't pretty.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Another life ruined, as Amelia Peabody might say*

Last time I ruined a guy's life, I insisted that the Woolly Mammoth take a fourth year of French in high school. That was five years ago. Apparently, I haven't lost my touch.

Now I'm ruining my dad's life by moving him into assisted living. It's not entirely my fault. I have to share his resentment with my sister. The difference is that he feels more betrayed by me, as I've long been his solid rock of support.

The Woolly Mammoth hasn't actually expressed gratitude for my French class insistence. He does admit that he gained many free credit hours toward his degree and an early "upperclassman" status his first year of college due to my torture.

I can hope that someday my dad may acknowledge certain benefits derived by my interference in his life. We both know he has fewer years left to come around to my way of thinking on this matter.

When I went back to work after the divorce I discouraged my early-teen sons from phoning my place of employment unless there was "blood on the rug". I needed them to handle their own petty disputes and develop their self-sufficiency so I could bring in some bacon.

"Blood on the rug" is a useful guideline. Unfortunately the past year has brought many situations where Dad had to use his Lifeline pager to get help after falls and injuries. His neighbors and relatives worried every time their phones rang that Dad had fallen again. We were all dreading the call from a stranger informing us that Dad had been unable to page Lifeline, that he was found unconscious in a pool of blood on the linoleum or rug.

Dad probably won't do a junior year abroad in Italy. He may never thank me for removing him from his home of fifty-plus years. I hope that he meets some other alert seniors, and has an improved quality of life in his new assisted-living apartment. I hope to anticipate his chatty calls instead of dreading "blood on the rug" notifications. Maybe we will get past the resentments and petty disputes. Maybe I can keep bringing home a little bacon while still being Dad's emotional support. Sure would hate to think this is my last chance to ruin a guy's life.

*http://www.mpmbooks.com/peabody/index.html

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Petula Clark cleans out her folks' house

"Don't Dive In Your Own Dang Dumpster" is the first hit single for Petula's comeback. The flip side of the 45 rpm is "When You're Alone and Life Is Making You Lonely You Can Always Move Into Assisted Living."

Petula doesn't wear make-up by Yardley for this music video. She is too sweaty dragging that ancient couch out of the basement to heave into the Dumpsters R Us construction container plunked on the driveway. Sometimes it is necessary to rearrange the contents of the twenty-yard dumpster in order to accommodate more and more. This can be done by pushing the contents while standing on the dumpster side rails, but should NOT be done by diving. Just FYI, Petula might want to put the biggest junk in first.


© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Knievel Anole or Anole Oakley?

Recently Robbie Knievel, the son of Evel, jumped his motorcycle over two Budweiser trucks near the state capital building in Austin, Texas. This stunt did not impress me. I was much more awed by Stubby's leap from the forehead of the clay mask across 2.5 feet into the canna bloom. The little lizard with the short tail seems to have mastered the art of reckless abandon when it comes to patio jumps.

Stubby is still shy when I head outside with my camera. He raced from the flowers into the hiding spots among large canna leaves.

Had to dig out my Edith Hamilton's Mythology to get my story straight. Stubby didn't spring from the terra cotta mask forehead full-grown and in full armor like Pallas Athena from the head of Zeus. It was still an impressive leap.

Wondering tonight why I respect Annie Oakley's stunts but not Robbie Knievel's. Had a great visit to the Annie Oakley Center at the Garst Museum in Greenville, Ohio on a rainy day this month. Annie was a class act, and a much better role model for young Stubby than Mr. Knievel. The image below is of mother-of-pearl opera glasses given to Ms. Oakley by Princess Alexandra, wife of England's Prince Edward. Alexandra's photo is in the oval frame.




© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder