Renewing raindrops

I like this fabric, too. It reminds me that the anticipated storm brings the needed moisture to the soil allowing growth. The storm is not just a sky show.


The brown doesn't work with all the car window blocks. I'm a bit concerned about the fabric fading.


While I was waiting for the clerk to measure and cut the fabric I was subjected to Neil Diamond's 1971 "I Am, I Said." I'd have preferred B. J. Thomas singing "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head," from 1969. Thank heaven it wasn't the 1968 Richard Harris version of "MacArthur Park." I don't think that I could take it, as it took too long to bake it--Even longer than this project has taken!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Enlightening "lightning"

The air has been miserable. Hot, humid, Ozone Level Orange, depressing, oppressive, enervating, and full of mosquitos. Late August in Dallas. Dark clouds pile up. We get one loud crash of thunder, and six raindrops sizzle on the sidewalk. That's it. Show's over. Move along, folks.



It's enough to make me very cranky about spelling. Before the thunder, there was a flash of lightning. Not "lightening", as I see so often in print. I haven't had a flash of lightening since the birth of my youngest son.

Lightening occurs about two weeks before labor when the fetus lowers into the maternal pelvis, engaging for childbirth. It seems appropriate to point that out on this Labor Day weekend. The pregnant woman feels a slight lessening of abdominal distension when this occurs. Of course, she may also feel like the Thanksgiving wishbone about to be pulled apart.

Lightning is a discharge of atmospheric electricity. Not the same thing.

I'm pleased to report that lightening is also a laser method of removing tattoos, a very good thing. To use it in a sentence, "The trained medical professional is lightening LeRoy's lightning bolt tattoo that he got in Leavenworth," is a very proper and applaudable use of the word.

To lighten is to illuminate or brighten; to decrease the weight or load; to lessen the oppressiveness; or to move through the value scale from black to gray to white.

To lighten up is an idiom meaning to relax, to become less serious and more cheerful. It will be possible when the weather changes and proofreading returns to Earth!

For now, I've put The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys in the cd player. Spell it right or leave me alone.

Sometimes I feel like I'm fading away

You're looking at me, I've got nothing to say

Don't make me angry with the games that you play

Either light up or leave me alone

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Tres Perro Noche

The assembled repatriated juniors were discussing the disgusting trend toward dogs being taken everywhere in North Texas. I agree with them that it's very annoying, but don't Italians take their dogs to the sidewalk restaurants? Certainly, the returning students say, "but Italian dogs are so much better trained!"

Not being really connected with celebrity trends and gossip, I don't know who to blame for the teacup dog craze. Last week I watched a woman smoosh her dog down into her totebag before she walked into Chipotle to order her lunch. My weekend lunch buddy and I are displeased when diners on the La Madeleine patio retrieve their dogs from the car, let them off leash, and leave them unattended while they go inside to get more coffee and jelly.

It's an arrogant assumption that everyone dining on the cafe patio will be as enchanted with your precious wuzzum woggy-doggy as you. I don't want to share my dining experience with your uzzy-wuggy muffy-wuzzum.

The college students all applaud my oration on the subject. They add that if children can't behave in a restaurant, their parents shouldn't bring them! Bold opinions from the upcoming generation of parents, so I'm noting the date on the calendar. We will check in with them on that subject in another four years!

In 1982 my spouse decided that we should take our six month-old son to a trendy fondue restaurant in Omaha. Geez! "Trendy fondue restaurant" sounds sooooo long ago! No wonder that baby has a master's degree. It was named "The Golden Apple" (the restaurant, not the baby). When we walked in with our baby, a collective gasp of horror went up from the dining customers and the waitstaff. Did we get the hint? No. Did we make that mistake again??? No.

I've been plagued by mangled mental music from Three Dog Night, circa 1970 :


Want some wuzzums at your restaurant,
Teacup doggie by your knee
What's all these crazy questions they askin' me
This is the craziest party there could ever be
Don't turn on the lights, 'cause I don't want to see
Mama told me not to come
Mama told me not to come
That ain't the way to have fun, no

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Country pickin' fingers

Don't park your double-wide in the Rose Garden, Bill. You weren't a horrible President, especially compared with Dubya. Nothing you and Monica did under the desk was any worse than what millions of good old boys and girls do in offices, Ford F-150s, and tacky motels every day. I just don't want another Tag Team Clinton mud-wrestling administration.

Should Hillary become the Democratic nominee by some weird twist of soap operatic amnesia fate, I will root for her greased pig in the 4-H grandstand against McCain's Hundred Years' War hog. But even then, Bill, please don't set your trailer up on cement blocks out there by that reflector pool!

I'll fix your flat tire Merle
Don't ya get your sweet country pickin' fingers all covered with erl
Cause you're a honky, I know, but Merle you got soul
And I'll fix your flat tire Merle

So, Bill, just set your Lazy Boy recliner out there on the lawn of your library and amp up the Pure Prairie League song. Leave the busted out washing machine on the porch. Don't make me cross state lines to explain it any clearer!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Cat in the cream jar

We'd only been married a few months when my spouse went into a Doc Watson/John Fahey acoustic guitar/bluegrass phase. I was totally unprepared for this jog in the newlywedded-bliss road. Suddenly, the Charlie Daniels Band held the stage in my harvest gold apartment kitchen right next to the avocado green crockpot and the free toaster we got when we opened our account at the Savings & Loan downtown.

As if being married wasn't surreal enough, my spouse was sprawling there in the black vinyl beanbag* chair actually studying the Slim Whitman "Yodeling Cowboy" K-Tel commercials on our tiny black & white tv between the "MASH" and "Barney Miller" reruns. It was as jarring as the spilled popcorn on the Husker red shag carpet.

My spouse rushed the stage at a Charlie Daniels Band concert in the then-new Bob Devaney Center at the Nebraska State Fairgrounds. Dang, but if mosh pits had been invented back then he would have been squeezed into apple cider! ***

These days my little students are singing "Fire On the Mountain" for their spring music festival. This traditional folk fiddle song was known to me only from those Charlie Daniels** years. The devil went down to Georgia and engaged in a fiddle competition to gain a country boy's soul.

The kids sing, "Fire on the mountain, run, boys, run. Hey, get along, get along Josey. Hey, get along, get along Jim. Cat in the cream jar, run, girls, run. Hey get along, get along Josey. Hey get along, get along Jim." Two boys made this poster of the cat in the cream jar:



They sing a new-fangled verse, "Chicken in the crockpot, mulligan stew," to Skip-To-My-Lou. Thank heaven they didn't have to put the chicken in the George Foreman Grill!

*The littlest kids like to sit in the "bing-bang chair" while I tie their shoes after naptime.

**When the devil finished
Johnny said well you're pretty good old son
But just sit down in that chair right there
And let me show you how it's done
Fire on the Mountain Run boys, run
The devil's in the House of the Rising Sun
Chicken in a bread pan picken' at dough
Granny does your dog bite No child, no

***Just FYI, our sons turned out pretty normal. Only one listens to Pat Green.



Thinking now of the Marshall Tucker Band--more of a marinaded and grilled chicken tender song:

Fire on the mountain
Lightnin' in the air
gold in them hills
and it's waiting for me there

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Preschool organic control of ICW

At recess the preschoolers rush over to the garden to examine the lacy damage to the broccoli and brussel sprout plants. They are excited, at least for these few days, to search for the offending imported cabbage worms (ICW), and quite willing to pick them off the leaves. Cupping the caterpillar in their palms, they run to the other end of the playground to release the very hungry caterpillars on different sorts of plants.

ICW are soft and unthreatening. If you were going to sew one, you would use a spring green sueded polyester fabric of just the sort your great granny might have for a special occasion pantsuit with elastic waistband for bingo nights at the assisted living center. Then you would stuff the polyester worm with old snagged knee-high nylons.

The preschool girls aren't the least bit squeamish about touching these cabbage granny caterpillars. The trick is to find the darn things! ICWs are perfectly camouflaged against the leaf veins. They are just as hard to see when they are an inch long as when they were at a quarter-inch. The five year old girls are getting better at this tricky sport. I can almost hear Curt Gowdy's breathy "American Sportsman" delivery commenting on the hunt.

The smaller girls are glad to hold, cuddle, and relocate the caterpillars. Interestingly, the preschool boys are only interested in this process if they can put a caterpillar in their pants pocket and take it home. O, ye snips and snails!

Like most of March Madness, I don't care who wins this game. Unfond as I am of brussel sprouts, cauliflower, and broccoli, I just enjoy watching the competition. I'm putting some J. J. Cale in the cd player. Eric Carle is playing Eric Clapton in the semi-final! I'm a lucky mom to have attended the 2004 Crossroads Guitar Festival at the Cotton Bowl with two of my sons!

Kale or Borecole is a form of cabbage (Brassica oleracea Acephala Group), green in color, in which the central leaves do not form a head. It is considered to be closer to wild cabbage than most domesticated forms. The species Brassica oleracea contains a wide array of vegetables, including broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. The Cultivar Group Acephala also includes spring greens and collard greens, which are extremely similar genetically.


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Jethro Tull for Verizon?

Let's bundle in the jungle! Bundling is where the money-saving action is, but only if Verizon FIOS has come to your doorstep. If you are unsure of the availability at your address, the on-line and 1-888 telephone sources will give you plenty of chances for hacking vines with big machetes.

It's a jungle out there, trying to understand the plans for high-speed internet, cable t.v., landline and wireless phones. A person could almost long for the good old days when the rotary dial phone was on the kitchen wall, and the t.v. got three channels. That would be a person feverish from malaria trying to dig a canal across the swampy isthmus of intentional confusion and leech-infested obfuscation. Would you rather be trapped in the quicksand of health insurance jargon, or the Babel of cellphone rate plans???

My herd of cellphones are with Cingular, which now has the silly name "AT&T Mobility." The name conjures up wheelchair racers talking on cellphones as they careen down the ramps at Madonna Rehab. At&T bundling is as bungled as Verizon's. Wheelchairs remind me of Tom Robbins' Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates. Check it out.

Let's bungle in the jungle --- well, that's all right by me.
I'm a tiger when I want love,but I'm a snake if we disagree.


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Why spelling is still important

SpellCheck cannot tell you how to pack your duffel bag for a weekend getaway:

The Woolly Mammoth emailed his fretting mama from Italy to say he is alive and well. He wrote that he spent last weekend "on a beach near the town of Grossotto." I was quick to Google "Grossotto," which is in the mountains near the Swiss/Italian border. No beach in sight. High on a hill with a lonely surfboard, Layee odl, layee odl layee-oo!

Grossotto is the home of a solar park, a large array of solar photovoltaic collection panels used to turn sunlight into power. It's probably a good place to catch some rays, but not necessarily to watch bikini volleyball.

Studying the map of Italy hanging above the kitchen sink while loading my dishwasher, I'm guessing the Woolly Mammoth went to a beach near the town of Grosseto. Grosseto is near the sea and close to his study center. It sounds like a better place for swim goggles than for Google.

My travel budget is for a weekend getaway to Gross-out-oh, Texas. That's where you find old men in Speedos holding sheets of HyVee store brand aluminum foil while beached in webbed lawn chaises after the Senior Swim at the city natatorium. Do walruses get sunburned?

One little student is working on the phonetic "G" sound . He has pictures of a goose, a goat, and a garbage can:

Guh, guh, guh, juice.
Guh, guh, guh, goat.
Guh, guh, guh, trash!

The Woolly Mammoth might oughta maybe better check the spelling before he departs next weekend. He's going to look like severe juice goat trash wearing a Grossotto parka at the Grosseto beach.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Ramble on, hornworms

On the phone with Dad, discussing Hy-Vee chef salads, Swanson pot pies, humidity, and no-name golf, when I spy the tomato hornworm hiking across my concrete patio. It's lost, but making very good time. No tomato plants here! Hornworm movements are hiking in anti-gravity boots on a Seventies' waterbed. A rambling hornworm should be accompanied by a merry-go-round calliope version of Led Zep's "Ramble On":

Ramble On,
And now's the time, the time is now,
to sing my song.
I'm goin' 'round the world,
I got to find my girl,
on my way.
I've been this way ten years to the day,
Ramble On,
Gotta find the queen of all my dreams.

Before the phone call is over, a second hornworm traverses the patio, again left to right. True, it could be the earlier lost immigrant on a second circuit searching for Heffalumps. Maybe I'm in Wonderland without my pocket watch.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Newspapers, breakfast, & indigestion

My Dallas Morning News hasn't been arriving early enough for me to scan it at breakfast before I go to work. I need my newspaper to arrive between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m. on weekdays, and between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. on weekends. As a hard-core lifetime newspaper subscriber, it really eats my Cheerios when the paper shows up after 6:45 on a weekday.

The day the paper wasn't delivered until 7:20, I called the DMN customer service number and told the woman I was cutting back to the weekend subscription (Friday-Sunday only). Explained to her while she smacked her chewing gum that it really sticks in my craw when the paper is late. She did not know what a craw is, and didn't care.

Waiting for a late newspaper ruins my breakfast. I might as well read the paper online, which cuts down on the recycling. The bad thing is I can't do the crossword puzzle while drinking coffee in bed with an online newspaper.

Some newspapers do more than ruin my breakfast. They cause indigestion. It's been many years since I subscribed to the Plano Unproofread. That newspaper should go straight to papier mache, just as some movies go direct to video without a theater release.

Papier mache translates as chewed paper, but a bird would find the paper stuck in its craw.

My dear old red American Heritage Dictionary has

craw n. 1. The crop of a bird. 2. The stomach of an animal. --stick in the (or one's) craw. To be unacceptable or offensive. [Middle English crawe. Old English craga (unattested). See gwere...


According to Language Log:

IDIOM: stick in (one's) craw To cause one to feel abiding discontent and resentment.

Etymology: like something you cannot swallow, based on the literal meaning of craw (= the throat of a bird) craw

O.E. *cræg "throat," a Gmc. word of obscure origin.

There must be an Aesop's fable to cover this situation... The Editor and the Early Riser, or The Crab and the Craw. I'll check my childhood copy tomorrow morning between 5:30 and 6:30 with a mug of hot coffee in bed.

Perhaps the late papers are a hint that I could check in with my tiny patch of nature out the back door instead of fretting about the news across the nation:

Morning has broken, like the first morning

Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird

Praise for the singing, praise for the morning

Praise for the springing fresh from the world

Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven

Like the first dewfall, on the first grass

Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden

Sprung in completeness where his feet pass

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning

Born of the one light, Eden saw play

Praise with elation, praise every morning

God's recreation of the new day


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Immobilized

You picked a fine time to balance mobiles. I don't know if Al (Sandy) Calder ever visited Alabama, but his art works are pronounced the same as the city of Mobile, AL. True, the word mobile is usually pronounced like Mobil Oil whenever it is capable of being moved from place to place or marked by the easy intermixing of different social groups. [In our current mobile society more and more people appreciate Calder's mobiles.] But when you are talking about a type of sculpture consisting of parts that move in response to air currents, PLEASE think of Lucille or Loose Wheel:

You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille,
With four hungry children and a crop in the field.
I've had some bad times, lived through some sad times,
But this time your hurting won't heal.
You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille.



A Calder mobile at the University of Arkansas art department. And no, it isn't "400 children"! It would be really difficult to balance all those kids, let alone hang them from the ceiling.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

My trail of bread crumbs

Last evening I got to hear the Dallas Symphony Orchestra perform "Pictures At an Exhibition" conducted by the Russian guest Andrey Boreyko. The music was clear and light, rich, dark and frightening, bold and triumphant. I liked Andrey Boreyko's interpretation very much. Felt like I had been wandering in the woods of a Grimm fairy tale without my bread crumbs. I sat above the stage level, which was good for seeing the harps and bells and other unusual featured instruments. It makes me happy when the tuba player gets such rousing applause!

My college watercolor professor, Gail H. Butt, Jr., would have been eighty-two this weekend. In my drawing, painting, and composition classes with Professor Butt, I heard his lecture about "rich, delicate, and bold" many times, usually reinforced with recordings of classical and jazz music, and the smell of his cigar.

Scott Cantrell's review in the Dallas Morning News comes straight from my UNL watercolor class:

Rounding out the concert was a vividly characterized Mussorgsky-Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition, with great care over gradations of volume and color. At big moments, Mr. Boreyko was even sensitive enough to factor in the generous reverberation of the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

The Lincoln Symphony Orchestra performed "Pictures At an Exhibition" for an assembly at Millard Lefler Junior High in 1970. Made quite an impression on me! Then in 1972, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer had a rock version of Mussorgsky's composition. I have to admit that my favorite album in 1972 was "Fragile" by Yes. If I had to listen to much of the ELP or of "Roundabout" today I would get a needle-sharp sinus headache! We won't even consider Procul Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale", or the Moody Blues' "Knights in White Satin".



Mussorgsky was Russian, so his folktale inspirations are Slavic, not Germanic like them good old Grimm Boys of the consulting firm Hansel and Gretel, LLP. The wise and powerful Baba Yaga, crone/witch/earth goddess, is a fascinating archetype. Plus, she has architectural implications. Baba Yaga is sometimes cruel, and other times kind, but she always lives in a house that walks about on chicken legs. I wish my condo could go wandering around the neighborhood on skinny legs in fluffy slippers when I have insomnia.

So nice to learn there's a reason for the chicken legs:

A "cabin on chicken legs with no windows and no doors" in which Baba Yaga dwells sounds like pure fantasy. In fact, this is an ordinary construction popular among hunter-nomadic peoples of Siberia of Uralic (Finno-Ugric) and Tungusic families. This was an ingenious invention to preserve supplies against animals during long absence. A doorless and windowless log cabin is built upon supports made from the stumps of 2-3 closely grown trees cut at the height of 8-10 feet. The stumps, with their spreading roots, give a perfect impression of "chicken legs". The only access into the cabin is via the trapdoor in the middle of the floor. Bears are strong, smart and stubborn enough to break into any door, but they cannot use a ladder or climb a rope to reach the trapdoor. A similar, but smaller construction was used by Siberian pagans to hold figurines of pagan gods.

I'm going up in my treehouse now, and pulling up the ladder to keep out bears. It's time to start preparing for the June 17th DSO concert featuring
Stravinsky: Firebird Ballet Suite (1919)
Mozart: Divertimento in D major
Vivaldi: Violin Concerto in C minor "Il Suspetto"
Tchaikovsky: Sérénade mélancolique
Debussy: Prélude à l'Après-midi d'une faune

Wedding?!

In the middle of Googling Herman W. Mudgett, my oldest called. "Mom, I have some questions about weddings," he said. GASP! Breathe in. Breathe out. [A soft and low voice in the back of my head started chanting, "Elope. Elope. Elope. Elope..."].

Everyday and everyday, I am thankful to be the mother of sons. A friend of mine says I'm a MOBO--a mother of boys only. MOBOism has been a good fit for me, and I've enjoyed it immensely. One of the side benefits of MOBOism is not having to obsess about providing The Perfect Wedding For My Little Princess*.

My oldest explained that the wedding in question was that of a fellow grad student. Whew. I asked if he was in the wedding party. "How would I know that?," he asked. Granted, he's been to two weddings in his life, or three if you count the one when he was two weeks old. Normally you know you are a groomsman because the groom personally asks you to stand up with him. It's not like being summoned for jury duty, I explain.

*T P W F M L P
It looks like a bad draw at Scrabble or an eye chart, but it requires weird dresses with matching shoes, fingernail polish, and lingerie showers. The good news is that games requiring attendees to make as many words as possible from the letters in the names of the bride and groom have pretty much passed by the wayside at bridal showers.

"I think you have to sit on a special side at the wedding. How do you know which side is the right one," my son asks, "and what is black tie optional?" At this point I'm printing out fourteen pages about Mudgett, America's first serial killer. Fortunately, my oldest is more adept at Googling while on the phone than I. We figure out that he can wear his suit. This is good. The last time he wore a tux and cummerbund he ruined the effect by forgetting to zip his fly. I didn't mention prom since we were having such a fun discussion.

It's a good idea to take a SuDoKu puzzle or the NYTimes crossword along when you are summoned to jury duty. There's quite a bit of waiting around. Taking a SuDoKu or crossword to a wedding is considered bad form, though. Just a free bonus etiquette tip from the CollageMama! Those of us in the jury pool who weren't selected for the trial this morning raced out of the courthouse even faster than "Just Marrieds." We didn't have to gather up our trains or throw our bouquets. We didn't have to duck the rice or birdseed.

The info on H. H. Holmes aka Herman Mudgett was not for me. "Oh, sure," you mutter, "tell it to the judge". It was really for a friend's book club reading Devil In the White City about the Chicago World's Fair.



Now where's my old cassette of David Bromberg singing "Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair"?! Oh, and maybe I should tell my son he doesn't have to take his own Minute Rice to the wedding.

Taking the stage

Maybe it Abe Lincoln's birthday that started it, or maybe it was Olivia the pig, but theater boxes were on my mind. What if... what if? Could we add french fry box seating to our theaters? If you were performing, wouldn't you want your friends sitting in the boxes? What if your best friends were french fries, crinkle fries, or curly fries?



When I was just a wee wisp of a child, in 1959, Hanna-Barbera introduced Snaggletooth, a melodramatic mountain lion, to the cartoon cast of The Quick Draw McGraw Show. Snaggletooth often said, "Exit stage right," when he got in a predicament. In 1959 I didn't know my right from my left. I still don't when I hear the words, "stage right" or "stage left". I am directionally-challenged, which is why I can't use a curling iron while looking in a mirror to save my life!



Snaggletooth evolved into Snagglepuss, but I still get mixed up with stage directions. I want to exit to my cave. Snaggletooth was also fond of saying, "Heavens to Murgatroyd!"



Bonus questions:

1. What year was Pure Prairie League's two-record LP, "Live! Takin' the Stage," album released?



2. What blogger imitated Quick Draw McGraw's alter ego, El-Kabong, and bashed her little brother over the head with his brand new plastic toy guitar on Christmas Day 1961?

What's your number?

During some recreational googling, a dear demented friend found a reference to a person named Nancy 3. Hoffman who expresses her Jewish heritage by playing accordian in a klezmer band called the Maine Squeeze somewhere in southern Maine besides running the only museum of umbrella covers. It sounds like a busy existence. Nancy's middle name used to be Arlene, but she had it legally changed to 3 just because she liked it better than the other digits she tried. You know how it goes. You need something to do sometimes besides slapping mosquitoes or blogging, so you change your middle name.

So, could we conduct a survey? I think it could be an interesting survey question. If you were to replace your middle name with a number between one and nine, what number would you choose? Then we could analyze the choices by age, gender, birth order, astrological sign, political and religious affiliation, tax bracket... I bet there are some significant differences between people who choose odd numbers and those who choose even. Why didn't I think of this when my kids had to do those ridiculous Science Fair experiments? This survey wouldn't have involved dyeing, burning, or exploding anything, and would cost less than the ecoli fast food burger project. (That one did have a great Led Zep soundtrack, I have to admit.)

Steven said it felt really weird when he had to be number 4 on a soccer team, because he had always been an odd number before. When I told my dad, he said he couldn't imagine being an even number. Two sons usually choose number three. I'll have to ask my oldest, and my mom, and other family members. Then I'll ask my coworkers.

I would pick five. I have inexplicably felt that five was my personal number my whole life, and especially so in certain fonts. 5 5 5 5 5 5

We moved here when Steven had just turned three. We moved on a very hot Memorial Day weekend. We had come down here on Steven's birthday, May sixth, to celebrate with his dad, who was living in fine style at Embassy Suites all that spring while I was single-parenting in Oklahoma. We had birthday cake at the elementary school playground the boys would attend in the fall, and then we went to the renaissance faire. Steven's big brothers had played t-ball in Edmond. I'm sure I have recounted my parental horror story of having them playing on different fields at the same time at different ends of Edmond when the tornado sirens sounded.

Little Steven was desperate to "be on a team". For his birthday my college friend sent him a little purple t-shirt with the pawprint of the Pickerington, Ohio high school team, and the number 3 on the back. Steven was thrilled. What he had actually wanted all along was a shirt with a number. Anytime he wore that shirt he was "on a team".

So, what is your number? What would you choose for your middle name? What made you decide on that number?

Patio Umbrella Olympics

There was a finch fight tonight at the condo. The rosy house finches were being downright ugly and territorial, and making a racket. At the same time, two mourning doves were using the patio umbrella as a trampoline. If you are of a certain age you will remember waterbeds. These mourning doves act like they have been beamed down on a waterbed. Whoa, dude, maintain!

To complete the circus, a lime-green anole is traveling the circumference of the umbrella stopping at each spoke to do a throat display dance. Reminds me of the time I saw Chaka Khan, the Eagles, Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. This line-up makes me giggle, but without the brownies.