Into the Wild

Awake at 4:42, I made the pot of coffee (with no bats), and wrapped in my "vision quest" quilt to watch the rest of "Into the Wild". Something made me check out the dvd when I worked at the library Saturday. Since then I've watched a bit of the movie each evening. Several times I discovered tears sliding down my cheeks.

The movie is so beautiful, so well played by Emile Hirsch and Hal Holbrook. I'm am trying to recover my limited understanding of "aesthetic distance" from Nelson Potter's philosophy class of thirty years ago. The story seems only an onion skin away. Finishing my viewing left me with a raw, scraped feeling, and again the tears.

We each want for our children happiness, of course. I hope they find wisdom, as well, and enjoy self-motivation and self-discovery and great contentment, as I do for myself. Still, as a mother, I can't imagine the pain if one of my sons felt he needed to disappear to find those things.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

The Oil Spot is Gone

Long Live the Oil Spot!

My youngest left for college today in his oil-dripping Infinity. I blessed his departure. I wasn't losing a son. I was regaining a parking space.

The Infinity has been parked and dripping in my condo guest space for over a year while the Woolly Mammoth was studying in Italy. Before that, the guest space was the home of an oil-dripping Dodge Intrepid when Danger Baby spent his year in Italy. My condo neighbors have been very patient with my automobile storage, for which I'm grateful.

The photo doesn't show the rainbow sheen on the pavement that gives the stain its angelic aura. The faithful haven't arrived to venerate it yet. I can't auction it on e-Bay. Maybe tomorrow I'll try using the Zep Driveway & Pavement Concentrated Cleaner.



Saw the trailer for the Luke Wilson movie about holy stucco. Maybe Hollywood will discover the oil spot! If I squint it looks kinda like the Exxon Valdez.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Back to school--Voter registration!

My sons all have new addresses this fall. They need to make sure they have re-registered to vote long before the November presidential election. So many things to remember when you relocate, guys, but this is very important!

All public libraries are required to have voter registration forms available. If you want to vote in your home community instead of your campus community, you'll need to investigate absentee voting procedures. These differ in each state. Advance preparations are required.

Your mom knows you have certain procrastination tendencies. Please don't delay, as states have different deadlines for registering. November gets here faster than we can imagine. Check out the appropriate website for more information.

Ohio

New Mexico

Chicago

All Fifty States

You may need to attach copies of identification documents with your application that show your current address. The first time you vote you'll have to show specific forms of identification at your polling place on Election Day. Forms of ID for might be a current, valid photo ID, a current utility bill, bank statement, government check or document, or paycheck that shows both your name and address. Filling out a post office change of address form is a good start. Even better, please directly inform your bank and other entities of your new address.

Postal Service online Change of Address

It would be really nice if you gave your mom a call or email letting her know you've taken care of registering to vote. She'll be really pleased.



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

MaxWorm House vermicomposting?

I don't know if this will work, but I've got a surplus of red wigglers volunteering to colonize new worlds. As teachers learn, it's all in how you phrase the question:

"I need someone really brave and strong for this job... "

The little kids are so desperate to be chosen that they use their left hand to support their waving right arm. Same with worms.

With the current success of our school wormbin, we are considering setting up bins for families, possibly as a school fundraiser. I'm wondering about the family that isn't really ready to commit to a regular bin due to space concerns or squeamishness. Could we hook them with an small introductory worm chalet, then reel them in for the big bin?

I understand parents who can handle the goldfish bowl, but don't want to walk the German shepherd or empty the kitty litter box. Heck, I've always been one of them. Worms have a lot going for them in the mini-pet competition:

• Worms do not run in a squeaky exercise wheel all night like hamsters.
• Worms do not die the second day like the residents of an Uncle Wiggly ant farm.
• Worms do not molt.
• Worms do not shed on your nice black slacks.
• Worms never need a bigger shell like a hermit crab.
• Worms don't require shoebox burials and backyard funerals.
• Worms DO NOT STINK.
• Worms are really very quiet.
• Worms are perfectly happy to be neglected while you are on vacation.
• Worms do not bite, scratch, or sting.
• Worms are easy-going about being picked up the wrong way.
• Worms do not need special accomodations to breed.
• Worms are pleased to participate in all non-malicious amateur experiments.
• Worms eat your sensitive double agent spy documents.

And so my intrepid volunteers are going to try living in a coffee can mini habitat, complete with handy handle, on the bathroom countertop. I drilled four holes in the lid, three in the bottom, and eight on the sides of the coffee can.

For this outpost, I've torn up half the lid of an egg carton and one tp tube. I shredded one each incredibly difficult Sudoku and NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle, and one credit card offer. I added a scoop of dirt, a dead petunia, and four leaves from last autumn, and sprinkled in maybe two tablespoons of water. You know those plates you always hoped your grown children would take to their first apartment, but they shopped at IKEA instead? I set the MaxWorm House on one of those plates.

Tomorrow, after they complete the rigorous selection process and written essay, I will add the best and brightest two dozen red wigglers. Thursday, I will give them a soggy strawberry. Maybe after that I'll teach them to write blog posts in their off hours, but they don't have the keyboarding skills of Archy the cockroach.





© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Irresistible force meets immovable alphabet?

"Could we play the rhyming game again? Can we make pig wig?," the preK student asks.

"Absolutely! That would be fun," I say, impressed that she considers our recent word-building endeavor a game. "What do we need?"

"The at bat hat book and the immobile alphabet," she says, and scurries off to find them.

There's a funny mental image. It must be wheelchair day at the double A baseball game! I'm putting on my rally cap for this at bat.

Her "immobile alphabet" is really the classic teaching movable alphabet. Maybe writer's block is just a bad case of immobilized alphabet...
"Can I play, too? I played yesterday!," a second girl asks. She's a bit older, and can think of sat fat rat. Of course she may join us.

Speaking of fat rats and immobile alphabets, my Cingular cellphone service recently changed to "AT&T Mobility". What a silly name! The word mobility doesn't inspire thoughts of untethered phoning freedom. It instantly conjures its opposite, immobility. Oh, great. I've got a cellphone that needs a ramp, and I'm paying how much a month?!

Back with the rhyming preK girls, we play the "game" with at, it, ox, ig, og, ug. I'm delighted when they put their consonant heads together to figure out twig. Sure, they have some ideas that don't make words. The best is vog. "You know, Ms. Nancy, vog, when you can't see anything!" That vould be a Transylvanian fog.


Why am I wearing my at bat hat rally cap on this voggy day? CollageMama is celebrating in the dugout on the twenty-first birthday of her youngest son. Pour that nice ice lime rhyme cooler of Gatorade on her head!

Put the rhyme in the coconut, shake it all up. Put the rhyme in the coconut, call the doctor, wake him up.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Perturbed? Oh, no.

Next week my youngest, the Woolly Mammoth, leaves for a semester or two studying art, art history, and Italian studies in Viterbo, Italy. Like his brother, Danger Baby, before him, he has arranged all the financing, scholarships, passport, visa, immunizations, transfer credits, and arrangements to meet his father in Europe all by himself. I'm enormously impressed and proud of this effort.

"All by myself " is an issue best addressed before kindergarten. It's a huge developmental step. When children feel unsure and want help, it's good to ask leading questions that allow them to work out their own solutions.

I keep reading about "helicopter parents" swooping in to micromanage problems for their college students, most recently in Mirage Magazine, volume 26, number 1, fall 2007 , the University of New Mexico alumni publication. Parents who are involved with their college kids on a daily basis resemble VTOL aircraft even more than helicopters. Vertical Takeoff/Landing aircraft are "transformers", shifting shapes to drop straight down into a problem, and occasionally lift back up out of it. Parents project the fx message that despite their own job responsibilities and personal activities, they are instantly available to morph into The Amazing Fixer and descend into any difficulty for their college student.

What does that tell the college-age child?

• You can't make decisions.
• You can't solve problems.
• You can't communicate effectively with teachers, advisors, or dorm staff.
• You can't find your own interests, talents, passions, or bliss.
• You can't take care of yourself when you have a cold.
• You don't have enough sense to know you should go to Student Health.
• You can't learn from your mistakes.
• You can't allow yourself to make mistakes.
• You can't manage money.
• You can't plan long-range.
• You can't decide if a person is a true friend.
• You can't remember to put a sheet of "Bounce" into each dryer load.
• You can't trust your own gut.

On the cover of the alumni magazine there's a very handsome photo of dramatic clouds and the ladder down into a kiva. The poster will be available for sale soon, as part of the Lobo homecoming this fall. I love the idea that going to college is like climbing the ladder into the kiva. It is a developmental step, same as the preschooler demanding to do something "all by myself". The kiva signifies greater self-awareness and self-confidence. It acknowledges accepting guidance from elders and shaman, as well as parents. It symbolizes community, friendship, and responsibility. Most of all, it represents wholeness and health. Everything we wish for our children. We just have to let them descend the kiva ladder alone.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Demolition Derby

Should you happen to need a 1999 Dodge Intrepid with peeling tinted windows which roll down but not back up, very occasional air conditioning, rear passenger interior door panels that fall off if you look at them, and a black exterior finish that has been sanded by the constant pummelling of teeny tiny asteroids that is the day-to-day unpolished gritty reality of Lubbock dust storms, please contact me. It is a big car with a huge trunk, just right for hauling all your worldly possessions to and from college. In that regard, it is not so very different from a 1961 Plymouth Sport Fury.

In Lubbock, you get small drifts of dirt on your patio, in your garage, inside your doors and on your windowsills. Back in 1987 my sons' father thought the little boys would love to see a demolition derby because they liked cars and crashing so much. The boys were four and two, and the baby was six weeks old. The derby was at night, somewhere in rural Iowa close to Omaha, and very loud. The two older boys did enjoy the smashing and crashing for awhile. Late in the evening, the wind picked up strong enough to blow over the concession tents. We were all coated with dirt from the derby track. We had dirt inside our eyes, ears, noses, and throats. Whenever the boys seemed deaf to the words of their mommy over the next two decades, and surely that never happened, I blamed it on the demolition dirt derby!

In our delightful Tech graduation weekend, the best meals were supper at Gardski's and Mother's Day "breakfast" at Freebirds. Gardski's is in a 1920s era home with a fine porch, and has an eclectic menu. We all found it hard to choose, and enjoyed our choices. Unlike the Dodge Intrepid, the a/c was on hyperdrive meat locker setting!

The Lubbock Freeb!rds World Burrito restaurant lacked the memorable visual of the guy with the tattooed Third Eye at the Austin restaurant. Still, it served up one mighty fine foil-wrapped burrito with avocado and roasted garlic on a cayenne tortilla. I love my occasional Sunday "breakfasts" at Chipotle, getting my Tabasco fix and reading the Dallas Observer. Freebirds has more choices than Chipotle for your special Sunday brunch!



When you think eye, think Intrepid!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Magical, enchanting Lubbock, Texas

Never would have expected that I would find these delightful fairies and elves just five miles from obsessively, level Lubbock, Texas. When you think Lubbock, you just don't think Fantasia!

Fabulous, yes. I was so very proud of my Texas Tech graduate at commencement. Enjoyed every minute with the graduate, his special friend-girl, and his younger brother--time spent dining, relaxing, and even cleaning his apartment for move-out day. The trip was great, and felt more like a vacation than a weekend.



For Mother's Day we went to the Llano Estacado Audubon Society's nature trail at the Buffalo Springs Lake wildlife refuge. You drive out 50th Street from Lubbock on that incredibly flat plain past fields of yellow wildflowers* and prairie dog towns. Then you suddenly drop off the earth into Ransom Canyon and Yellowhouse Draw. Walking down the cliff from the plain you go through a dry, rocky caliche zone that has cactus, wildflowers, wild grasses and scrubby little bushes.



Next you walk through a shady hackberry forest and thickets with scads of butterflies. The fairies and elves were in tiny meadows filled with sunshine. The elves wearing pointy hats were waltzing with the fairies attired in gossamer wings and tutus! These dandelion-type fluffs were baseball-sized, the largest I'd ever seen.

A marshy ecosystem of cattails, reeds, herons, and bubbas fishing below the dam brings new vegetation and birds. The whole hike was accompanied by constant varied birdsong (and some annoying jet-ski noise).



I was following one son down the trail, and we were both taking photos. At some point the trail split. I kept walking down, thinking I would catch up with him. His fork looped back up the cliff. I took my fork on down to the dam spillway. When I got to the marsh, I used my cellphone! Where are you!?


Huffing back up the trail, I didn't puff on the beautiful seed heads or interrupt the fairy dance. I was still marvelling at the dark brown immature green heron that posed for a photo shoot. Alas, my camera doesn't have a magical zoom. Glad I didn't miss any of this on the fork less taken.



*The fields are stunning from the Southwest airplane arriving at LUB just before sunset. They glow down below like hovering cadmium yellow flying carpets awaiting their genie pilots for black light take-offs.


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Stop in the Name of Love, I Mean It!

Hang up now! Young love used all our shared rollover minutes. Love is a many-splendored and text-messaged thing, a personally-toned ring, and a definite zing. But now it is time for Danger Baby to dip his quill pen in the ink well, and write a poem in his best penmanship to his beloved, then fold it neatly and mail it at the post office. Maybe his brother, the Woolly Mammoth, will have enough cell phone minutes to straighten out his Albuquerque utility bill. (Try saying "Albuquerque utilities" three times fast.)

Love is a many-splendored thing,
It's the April rose that only grows in the early spring,
Love is nature's way of giving a reason to be living,
The golden crown that makes a man a king.
Lost on a high and windy hill,
In the morning mist two lovers kissed and the world stood still,
When our fingers touch my silent heart has taught us how to sing,
Yes, true love's a many-splendored thing.

I just made a Supremes collage. I wish I'd glued a Nokia in each gloved hand. Is it possible to text-message wearing full-length gloves?



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Assisted living is completely wasted on the elderly

College provides us with our very best and most appreciated napping opportunities. College students value naps. They tweak their napping performance. They seek out heightened napping experiences. They nap-train for both time and distance. We will not even ponder how they season and spice their nap creations.

Toddlers and preschoolers mostly resent their naps as a conspiracy by exhausted grown-ups. Old folks don't even appreciate that they have been snoring the afternoon away on a major nap they don't remember.

Parents of toddlers, preschoolers, and college students wish it was their turn for rolling up in a Smurf comforter and listening to a Raffi tape. Middlish-aged children of snoring old folks envy the chance to doze off sitting straight up in the wheelchair.

Assisted living: A small apartment with staff to help you put on your socks and change your sheets. Your own tiny kitchen and a dining room where you can order off the menu. Managing your investments online and a Texas line-dancing club. My walker is better than your walker. Someone to drive you to appointments. Time to wonder what driver the pro will use on his tee shot.

Dad doesn't want to move to assisted living. I do. When can I start?

In the next novel by Stephanie Kallos there will be a character partially named after my dad. I don't know if the character will be in assisted living. Being in fictional living is good, too. Now, then, it's time for my nap.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Such a Whirlwind of Activity

My goodness, it's amazing what can be accomplished with a case of spring fever! All the winter debris is gone from the patio, and the storage shed is reorganized. The big black trash bags have been hauled to the dumpster. It's quite lovely if one is out of the wind. Maybe I'll just sit down, have a cool beverage, and pat myself on the back as I survey my lovely little backyard. Sit down on what? No wonder it seemed so spacious out here! My plastic patio table and chairs are being put to good use this semester as the elegant dining room furniture in a college guy apartment.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Condo Hostile/College Hostel

This evening I'm hosting migrating Tulane students in the condo. This may not make my condo neighbors ecstatic, but they will live through it. The Tulane students were displaced by Katrina, and ended up in my son's dorm in New Mexico last fall. For a cultural exchange, my son's high school lunch gang is here, too.

I've never been a care-free world traveler. I've never even been an extremely tense world traveler. I may have been the last mother to haul cloth diapers and a stinky diaper pail on a road trip. Funny thing, the diaper pail seems like year before last, but it was really 1983. I can still smell the Desitin diaper rash cream.

The Return of the Foodie

Met my foodie TTU Red Raider son at the airport yesterday, home from a summer internship in Germany. He'll only be here a few days, so we went to Central Market second thing this morning. He loves to cook, he's good at it, and it was fun to share the shopping trip. We got delicious Texas peaches, items for Greek salad, Italian cookies, tomato/mozzarella with fresh basil, Smart chicken, and some very nice pork chops that we made for lunch before the outdoor temp reaches 100 again and makes the kitchen unbearable. We glazed the pork chops, carrots, mushrooms, and green pepper with "Austin Slow Burn" Green Chile Jam. Went great with the Texas peaches.



I've grown rather fond of Central Market for the occasional nutritious/delicious inspiration. I've never again met the foodie lamb puppet that traumatized me on my first visit, thank you very much. It's the Hatch chile harvest festival at the store, but the chiles are quite mild this year because of all the rain. "All the rain" is a strange phrase to use in connection with New Mexico. The village of Hatch is near Las Cruces in SW New Mexico, and it's the Chile Capital of the World. This brief from today's Dallas Morning News:

Flash-flood watches were issued for much of New Mexico as monsoon rains continued Monday. The governor sent a formal request to the White House asking for a presidential disaster declaration for the southern New Mexico village of Hatch, where more than 400 homes were affected by the floodwaters last week. Officials warned of more flash-flooding there Monday evening.

Very bad news for my UNM Lobo son with his acquired fondness for spicy chiles. Wish we could sit down with Al Gore at the Frontier Cafe across from the UNM campus for a good breakfast and bizarre global weather update! By the way, Al, if you're near Dallas, we are going to have a really good Greek salad for supper tonight. There's enough for Tipper, too. The Foodie is in charge, and it will be delicious.

Three Bras Before Breakfast

Thank heaven for Target! It is good to be able to shop before it gets hot on a Sunday morning in North Texas. It is especially good to be able to buy a toaster oven on sale, Cover Girl tinted sunscreen moisturizer, and three bras before breakfast.

My college son, home for the summer, requires bagels. Bagels are one of his Basic Food Groups. Bagels, in turn, require toasters or toaster ovens. Toasters and toaster ovens fit in the category of small appliances where my luck is mighty poor. Coffee makers are my most ungrateful and noncompliant small appliances, followed quickly to that Big Kitchen Counter In the Sky by crockpots of assorted sizes. I must say in my own defense that I have excellent luck with handheld mixers and hair dryers. Professionally, I slay no glue gun before its time.

Yesterday I heard just enough of the NPR Studio 360 segment about vacuum coffee makers that I'm wondering about my grandma's stainless coffee maker that sat on the wheeled tea cart. It looked like a stainless steel laughing Buddha. Coffee smelled better in Grandma's kitchen than anywhere before or since.



Anyway, I got a good ten hours of sleep last night, and then set out to Target for a toaster oven. Found some bras. Three, in fact. Three bras before breakfast. I'm bursting into song! Three bras before breakfast, sung to the tune of "Three Coins in a Fountain," the Academy Award Best Song of 1954 by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn, recorded by the Four Aces and Frank Sinatra.

UFC Eye-rolling

"I don't think any guy is worth having to watch pro wrestling on t.v.," I told my son's long-time friendgirl as they relaxed on my couch. I rolled my eyes toward the t.v. She rolled hers, too.

My son explained that it was not the Jesse Ventura/Hulk Hogan type of wrestling, but UFC, the Ultimate Fighting Championship. He seems to think UFC has actual female fans, and is a serious competition. I rolled my eyes some more.

"WHAT is ULTIMATE FIGHTING in the UFC? Ultimate Fighting is a proprietary term of the UFC. It is defined as mixed martial arts competition between high level professional fighters who utilize the disciplines of jiu-jitsu, karate, boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, and other forms in UFC live events. UFC competitors or “Ultimate Fighters” are among the best-trained and conditioned athletes in the world. While this is a highly intense sport, fighter safety is of paramount concern to UFC ownership and management: it is noteworthy that no competitor has ever been seriously injured in a UFC event."

I bet some women viewers have been seriously injured making the universal hand signal for "gag me with a spoon". I'm just so embarrassed that a son of mine thinks it is appropriate to expect his special gal to sit idly next to him watching this stuff and making him feel like the pampered remote control sultan of cable t.v. I like it much better when they watch billiards or even the poker channel!

Of course these bells and buzzers in my head mean the topic has much more to do with me and my messed-up former marriage than about these two strong self-confident young equals. A decade ago my counselor told me that the girlfriends and wives of my sons would teach me lessons about myself that I needed to learn. Dagnabbit, Janie was right again! Seems like she told me my granddaughters would teach me, too. That will be an adventure! I hope it doesn't include Teletubbies.

Forklift needed

My youngest is many years from enlightenment, and I'm not just saying that in a snobby metro chic Berber carpet Buddha way. He is not ready to travel light or live nomadically. He has attachment-to-material-possessions issues. We had to rent a Chrysler Town and Country with fabulous stow and go seats to haul his belongings back to swampy Dallas from the UNM dorm. This summer I hope he'll spend time in his creatively-visualized mental Mongolian yurt contemplating what is actually NECESSARY for life on campus. Yo, mom, w's'up? I'm om om-ing on the Gobi range.



His older brother went to Italy for a school year with his necessary possessions in one duffel and one backpack. This is a good example for the Lobo. Alas, when he returned from Europe his belongings reconstituted and took over three rooms of the condo. I'm thinking that's a lot like sea monkeys.

On the drive to Albuquerque we took the Texas Plains Trail scenic drive from Silverton to Claude on SH 207 down into Palo Duro canyon and climbing back out. I was afraid to risk it on the way home because we were so heavily loaded. The canyon bottom is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to be marooned there forever with all my son's dirty laundry.

The geneaology hobbyists in my family have traced our ancestors back to the Unknown Liska, aka Liska, unknown. The Unknown Liska is alleged to have walked from Kiev to Prague with all his belongings in a wheelbarrow. In some versions of the story the Unknown Liska also toted his cabbage-eating mama in the wheelbarrow. Who was that masked Liska? He left a silver bullet! The Unknown Liska did not have a computer, monitor, and printer. The Unknown Liska was lucky if he had a pair of socks. The Unknown Lobo had a large mesh bag full of dirty socks.
The Lobo's father often waxed poetic about the glory days when he could carry all his worldly goods (including both the twelve- and six-string guitars) in the backseat of his puke yellow rusty 1970 Chevy Nova. In those days my favorite books were the two volumes of Nomadic Furniture (How to Build and Where to Buy Lightweight Furniture that Folds, Inflates, Knocks Down, Stacks, or is Disposable and Can Be Recycled) by James Hennessey and Victor Papanek. Alas, in tough times I sold those two volumes at the used book store.

If the Lobo can't find a job for the summer, maybe he can volunteer his services constructing brick and board shelves for clueless college students.

No Man is a Minivan

For Mothers' Day I'll be hauling my youngest's belongings back home from the dorm. It seems fitting, somehow. When this son was born, the two of us came home from the hospital on Mothers' Day. Now he's nineteen, and I don't need the diaper bag and zinc oxide any more. He won't fit in the stroller. In fact, if I take another son along to help with the toting and carrying down three flights of dorm stairs, I can't fit all the belongings and two sons into my poor, suspension-challenged Buick. And dang, I do hate it when important or expensive parts of the Buick fall off while I'm driving down the highway!

On another front, a friend's old spring-operated garage door opener crashed this week, narrowly missing both her and her car. Although I sometimes miss having a garage, I never miss the headaches of repairing garage doors. In my experience, garage doors only break when your husband is out of the country and you have twenty-six dollars to your name.

Shortly after I got rid of the husband and the garage door, but before I got rid of the Mazda minivan, I eked out part of my living teaching kindergarten readiness classes at the local rec center. The students were an incredible assortment. I taught twins, triplets, autistic kids, deaf kids, kids who were terrified of everything, kids who brought popsicles in their lunchboxes, kids who spoke no English, kids who took the baby dolls hostage, kids who acted out Lamaze labor and delivery, and a few kids who were ready to sit on their own chairs, listen to stories, learn to use scissors, and play well with others.



A favorite memory is of twin boys who spoke no English at the beginning. Their favorite toy was the Fisher Price house with all the little people, furniture, cars, and garage. Every week I listened to them converse in a combination of their language and twinspeak babbling. After many weeks I suddenly realized they were speaking English. They were saying, "mee-nee vahn," "ga-hadj door," "uppan-down." Minivan, garage door, up and down!

Thank heaven I have a whole team of brains assisting me! My friends helped me see the automotive options for the upcoming dorm retrieval trip. I could rent a bigger vehicle! We will be conducting the special ops mission in a rented Chrysler Town & Country mee-nee vahn. There may be some moments of sibling rivalry uppan-down as my sons begin to forge an almost-adult relationship of friendly equals. At least the Buick will stay out of the mechanic's ga-hadj.

No man is an island
No man stands alone
Each man's joy is joy to me
Each man's grief is my own

And remember, no mom is an island, either. Each son needs to phone!

Revolving doors and escalators

I learned so many things at the Miller and Paine Department Store in downtown Lincoln as a kid. It wasn't exactly All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, by Robert Fulghum, but it was major life skills. I learned how to go through a revolving door all by myself because my mom and my younger siblings were in the next compartment. I learned how to step onto an escalator, and how to pay attention and step off. I learned that I probably wouldn't be flattened and sucked down into the underbelly of the escalator if I forgot to step off, but that it wasn't worth risking since I was very skinny and easily flattened. Grown-up ladies had to stand on tippy-toe to ride the escalators so that their high heels would not be caught in the stair treads, and they would not be trapped for all eternity and sucked down into the underbelly. Somehow when the third grade Sunday school class sang out "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" each week, I thought He was trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath were stored in black patent leather high heels. My mom helped me learn to step to the back of the elevator, and to tell the elevator attendant sitting on her fold-down stool, "Three please," in a loud and polite voice. I learned that if you know that you like the macaroni and cheese with two cinnamon rolls it's okay to order that every time you go to the tearoom.

My sons are in revolving door and escalator mode this month. One son is finishing grad school, receiving the light blue hood for education, and moving to his new job in Ohio. Another son has zoomed in from Italy with barely enough time here to sell his diggity dawg Dodge Intrepid before zooming back to Germany. My youngest will pass through the Lone Star State for a crash course in the nomadic virtues of traveling light. I can't push the elevator buttons myself, but I can step to the rear of the elevator and go along for the ride!

Progress reports

Now that my soccer mom career has ended, I am discovering how many parts of my life were organized around that identity. I have a very difficult time writing semester progress reports for my art students at home due to all the piles and stacks and stuff angling for my attention. That's why I wrote progress reports sitting in my official soccer mom sling chair during team practices and game warm-ups for so many years.

My youngest is away at college, but some Sundays he joins a pick-up soccer game on the field outside the dorms. Some Sundays I sit on sidelines here just to get my work done. It is nice to visit with my ref friends at the half, but mostly I do my reading or writing in a little post-soccer-mom bubble of familiar sounds, sun, and breezes. No art teacher is an island, but maybe I'm a big mama sandbar in a flat river, just letting the sun soak in, the activity blur, and the distractions melt away.

No games today, so I sat my sandbar bottom down at the Dallas Arboretum to write the progress reports and watch the sailboats racing on White Rock Lake. The numerous brides at the Arboretum were billowing photogenically, too, near every fountain, arch, and pool in the gardens. I would not have been surprised if a bride had suddenly ordered, "Prepare to come about. Ready about. Hard alee!"

Mainly on the plain

One son is in Spain this week, visiting the Alhambra in Granada. Another son once programmed our computer to play the audio of Monty Python's classic Spanish Inquisition skit whenever it booted up. This was an improvement over when the computer played "Boomer Sooner" on start-up.

Thirty years ago we had college parties when Monty Python's Flying Circus invaded America on PBS. I wasn't into Monty Python all that much until my kids went crazy about it. They would do all the characters and accents around the dinner table. When the guys were watching the show, I was usually cooking, doing some homemaker task, or sitting working on papier mache projects. I have heard lots more of it than I've ever actually seen. That's why I'm enjoying Monty Python's Personal Best on KERA. This week's installment included the Dead Parrot Sketch and the Ministry of Silly Walks. One thing hasn't changed with time. I still seem to be cooking and doing laundry during the show.