Don't touch the hot _________!

Guess that appliance!

The preschoolers are struggling with the kitchen nomenclature work this week. "Kitchen" is a vocabulary word you surely must know, and don't call me Shirley. "Nomenclature" is a weird vocabulary word that should be defined as "some darn chunk stuck halfway down my throat," as in "We had to slap Joe Billy Dean on the back when he couldn't swaller Ma's deep-fried nomenclature."

Actually, nomenclature means a system of terminology. The word derives from the job description of a Roman steward, the Nomenclator, who announced visitors [called their names] and prompted stumped politicians to recall names and pet causes of constituents. You just can't make this stuff up in a Presidential year.

It's difficult to prompt politicians if you've got some greasy chunk of hush puppy stuck beyond your uvula, which is also known as "that hangy-down thang" in your throat. Because I'm learning the Spanish names for fruits along with the students, "uvas" is my word for the day. Uvas = grapes. That hangy-down thang is named for a "fancied resemblance of the organ to small grapes."

The point of this story is that our young-uns these days are better at naming the current president [George Washington] than they are at naming that hot thing with four burners and a Tollhouse cookie-baking oven. The kids can name measuring cups, microwaves, sinks, pans, and sponges. They know that refrigerator begins with Fffff -- fuh, fuh, fuh, fruh, fridj. So far, no child age 3-5 has been able to name that stove.

Home-cooking ain't what it used to be back in Bobbie Gentry's day!




© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Dangerous salmonella chips

My littlest student was telling me her playground tale of woe. She had "peskito bites" on her "yegs." I sympathized. I had peskito bites on my arms, and they were yitchy.


"Peskito" sounds like a good name for TexMex chips in the current salmonella outbreak. Salsa is our main food group, and we need 2-4 servings/day of tomato and jalapeno peppers.


© 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

Quail, driggle, enSkypeplopedia of knots

Rhyming words with the kindergartners is an enlightening exercise.

"Sun, fun, run, can you think of another word that rhymes?," I enquire.

"Quail", the student boldly avows.

Okay, but can you name these tools?

"Hammer, saw, clamp, screwdriver, driggle."

Driggle???

You know, for making holes.

Plugged in my headphones and made a leisurely call on Skype. Chatting away, I swiveled and skootched my wheely desk chair until I got the headphone cord completely wrapped around the chair wheel. Is Ma Bell in hell knotting macrame plant holders and cackling at life's complications since her breakdown? Will it take a driggle to get the cord untangled from the chair?

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Schridgerator

Microwave. Measuring spoons. Sink. Sponge. A five year-old student is doing kitchen vocabulary words. He has matched the photo cards with the printed words so far. Then we get to "Schridgerator".

Whoa! No wonder he can't match up the beginning letter sound for "refrigerator" with his unique pronunciation!

I've got problems of my own. All this time I've been expecting Richard Strauss' "Salome" to be Rimsky-Korsakav's "Scheherazade" under my veils of delusion.

Hush. Now I must contemplate the 1001 Dances of the Seven Electric Appliances!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

It's Thursday on Tuesday

We are way overdue for a new word, and this one is a doozy! A sweet, smart kindergarten student came to me today to share, "My baby brother was babmitized at church on Sunday."

Oh, my gosh! I hope they didn't throw the badminton out with the bathwater! I was so tickled it was hard to keep a straight face.

Here in Plano the Episcopalians are revolting. One of the largest congregations in the nation is all in a dither about the denomination confirming gay bishops, recognizing gay unions, and electing a, gasp, woman as the presiding bishop. I'm not an Episopalian, and I don't play one on t.v. I do think we should all pour ourselves a big glass of iced sun tea, stir in some serious sugar with a fancy-handled iced tea spoon, and sit our bezoozies down in the swing on the porch. Then we'll open the essays of Virginia Cary Hudson and laugh ourselves saner through O Ye Jigs and Juleps!

Martina Navratilova, who is almost my age, is playing in the Ladies and Mixed Doubles at Wimbledon in hopes of breaking Billie Jean King's record of twenty Wimbledon titles.



"Forty is the new 30 and I am a bit beyond that," she said. "I am a pioneer, and I think many great players will play to a great age in the future." I'm a bit past the new 30, but maybe I can stay at the new 40 if I keep smiling about my little students' vocabulary words.

Thirty Girlfriends

"I have thirty girlfriends," boasts the prekindergarten student missing his two front teeth. "The one who broke up with me got hippotized."

Dang. Don't you hate it when that happens. You meet a guy. Preferably one with all his own teeth. Go out a few times. It's not really working, so you call it off. Next thing you know, you are getting very sleepy, and fat, sleepy, and fat. When he snaps his fingers, you start clucking like a chicken. Even worse, you start humming detached snippets of old Fleetwood Mac.

Elvis Avocado

This week's Thursday word comes from a preschooler who knows how to have a good time, so put on your poodle skirt and saddle shoes and drop a 45 on the spindle!

Rockaroly!

Take a ripe avocado and cut it in half very carefully. Remove the seed to grow a plant. Scoop out the yummy soft inside. Put it in a bowl and mash it up. Preschoolers aren't interested in garlic or onions, so skip those and just squeeze in some lemon juice. Serve with triangle chips. And there you have it.



Rockaroly!

If you are headed to McKinney, Texas this weekend, check out the Elvis art at Carrie Garner's Galleria d' Arte. The gallery is at 100 E. Louisiana. That's the southwest corner of the old Collin County courthouse square. Roger Nitz has some entertaining artistic thoughts about Elvis on display. The one that gave me the greatest chuckle was a painting of a chicken with Elvis hair. I instantly grasped the connection between Elvis impersonators, poultry, Warner Bros. cartoon character, Foghorn Leghorn, and the old radio character, Senator Beauregard Claghorn on Fred Allen's Radio Show back way before I was born.


I wonder how it would sound on the radio if Fred Allen strolled up "Allen's Alley" to have a little chat with The Decider aka Dubya:

I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense. That's a joke... I say, that's a joke, son.

I might need to get out my green suede shoes to Guac Around the Clock. Preschoolers, you're doing a heckuva job.

Religion on the field and in the school

My students were discussing religion during art class, which isn't surprising on Maundy Thursday and Passover. It was the turns the discussion took that were surprising. Two girls were chatting:

1st girl "What school do you go to?"
2nd girl "________ Episcopal School."
1st girl "________, a basketball school?," with a mixture of surprise and envy.

(If you are having trouble understanding the conversation, start over and read it aloud.)

2nd girl "Yes, ________ Episcopal."
1st girl "What letter does it start with?," as she begins drawing her version of a school crest for the 2nd girl.

(Things go straight to "Who's on first?" from there.)

1st girl writes "___ A B S" for the school letters on the crest.
2nd girl "It's ___ E S."
I add to the confusion by spelling E-P-I-S-C-O-P-A-L aloud.

Frustrated, but ready to draw the mascot for "_____, A Basketball School" on the crest, first girl asks "What animal does your school team worship? Because my team worships horses."

2nd girl "My team worships panthers."

3rd child "My soccer team worships sharks, except we are forsworn against false idols."

I add "I think it is time to clean up now!"

What happened to last Thursday's word?

Every Thursday I learn a new word from my student, and I try to post that word out there on the Itty Bitty cyber frontier ASAP so that we can all become more erudite (not to be confused with crudites*). No need for me to hog all the erudition for myself! You know how it goes straight to my thighs anyway... sorta like a chocolate cake donut with white frosting and sprinkles. More about that donut later.

Now, I appreciate your mounting sentiment that it is cruel to leave you hanging on this barbed hook, justa wigglin' and waitin' for the Thursday word, with baited breath, even! Last Thursday's word was approcreate.

Since I subscribe to the highest standards of bloggership, I must hold each Thursday's word of insight up to the bifocal lens of Visine scholarly research. Which means, basically, I Google to see if the word might have been previously discovered, check the Online Etymology Dictionary, and page through my favorite old American Heritage Dictionary. I don't look it up in my Funk and Wagnalls**, since I don't have one. Alas, this time the Thursday word had several Google hits. What if "approcreate" is some sort of asexual function of Martian sea slugs? Scouring the Web for illumination I find that "approcreate" is an adjective used primarily by homophobic teens, Audi owners, physics nerds with Tesla tuners, and secretaries of student government organizations.

"Is that approcreate behavior?" The kids are singing the Queen song that goes, "We will, we will, rock you!" They are replacing "rock" with every rhyming word and variation that exists, and you know what I mean. Sensing a small dose of radiated teacherly disapproval they mimic a teacherly tone to ask each other if their behavior is approcreate.

Reminds me of an apocryphal family story about a spelling bee in a one-room country school. "Spell fish," the teacher says. "Fish, B O X," replies the spelling student.

Besides all this vocabulary instruction, I have a helpful hint for you free of charge. If you ever have to calm a preschooler who has been injured, I suggest you calmly introduce the subject of donuts. Preschoolers have very firm opinions about donuts, and they are always glad to tell you those opinions even while they are having a scary major nosebleed. As they express their opinions, their mental image of The Perfect Donut overcomes their fear. Of course just discussing donuts for the time required to stop a nosebleed may make a grownup gain five pounds.

*crudites (kroo-dit-ta) pl.n. Cut raw vegetables, such as carrot sticks and pepper strips, served often with a dip as an appetizer. [French, pl. of crudite, rawness, from Old French crudite, from Latin cru-di-tas, indigestion, undigested food, from crud-us, raw; see crude.] The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. See also Rabbit food

**One of the catch phrases on the late '60s American television show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In was: "Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls". My Thursday students would fit right in with Goldie Hawn, Arte Johnson, Ruth Buzzi, JoAnne Worley, Judy Carne, Lily Tomlin, Henry Gibson, Flip Wilson, and Gary Owens.

Thursday's Word

Each Thursday afternoon my art student is over-the-top smitten with the sound of a new word or phrase. Two weeks ago the word was "trespassing". Last week the phrase was "Venn berrygram". Today...

May I have the envelope, please.

The Oscar goes to "Ton Foyage". This is the first award for a mangled expression wishing your friends a nice spring break vacation. Thank heaven it has nothing to do with goose liver or cheese. After listening to the phrase chanted for over an hour, it did bring up long lost memories of a 1962 Disney movie.

pate (2)
"paste," 1706, from Fr. pâté, from O.Fr. paste, earlier pastée, from paste (see paste (n.)). Pâté de foie gras (1827) is lit. "pie of fat liver;" originally served in a pastry (as still in Alsace), the phrase now chiefly in Eng. with ref. to the filling.

Degustation] Quel Fromage!
Posted on Monday, January 16, 2006. From “Adapting a Lexicon for the Flavor Description of French Cheeses,” by Annlyse Rétiveau, Delores H. Chambers, and Emilien Esteve, in Food Quality and Preference. Originally from Harper's Magazine, July 2005.
Sources
Sweaty: sour, stale, somewhat cheesy aromatics reminiscent of perspiration-generated foot odor, found in unwashed gym socks and shoes
Goaty: pungent, musty, and somewhat sour, reminiscent of wet animal hair (fur)
Animalic: a combination of aromatics associated with farm animals and the inside of a barn
Musty/earthy: a slight musty aromatic associated with raw potatoes and damp humus
Musty/dry: aromatics associated with closed air spaces, such as attics and closets
Ashy/sooty: bark-like lingering aromatics associated with a cold campfire
Fermented: combination of sour aromatics associated with green vegetation, sauerkraut, soured hay, or composted grass
Green/herbaceous: fresh, green, slightly sour aromatics associated with green vegetables, newly cut vines, snap peas
Chemical: an aromatic associated with a broad range of compounds, which may or may not include chlorine, ammonia, aldehydes, etc.
Biting: a slight burning, prickling, and/or numbness of the tongue and/or mouth surface
Butyric: an aromatic that is sour and cheesy, reminiscent of baby vomit


We saw the Disney movie "Bon Voyage" as a family at the drive-in back in the Camelot era. It probably colored my ideas about world travel for the next forty-plus years without my ever realizing it--Fred MacMurray, Jane Wyman, and Tommy Kirk, man-hole covers, the Eiffel Tower, and a special voice pronouncing "guillotine!"

Whenever your spring break begins, and wherever you are headed, ton foyage to you.

Sonic Sensei

Forgive us our fast food breakfasts. A first grade student is obsessed with "trespasses". He's been to church, which is such a confusing experience! I still have flashbacks to third grade Sunday School class where singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" was the weekly main event.

THE Piglet lived in a very grand house in the middle of a beech-tree, and the beech-tree was in the middle of the forest, and the Piglet lived in the middle of the house. Next to his house was a piece of broken board which had: "TRESPASSERS W" on it. When Christopher Robin asked the Piglet what it meant, he said it was his grandfather's name, and had been in the family for a long time. Christopher Robin said you couldn't be called Trespassers W, and Piglet said yes, you could, because his grandfather was, and it was short for Trespassers Will, which was short for Trespassers William. And his grandfather had had two names in case he lost one -- Trespassers after an uncle, and William after Trespassers.

If you are in first grade, "trespassing" involves Jesus, Piglet, and Goldilocks sampling the Bears' porridge. Although porridge sounds more appetizing than curds and whey or gruel, you have to wonder if the Three Bears stepped out to order breakfast burritos and tater tots at Sonic.



Sssshhhh! Don't tell my doctor I go to Sonic, or I will get the blood pressure lecture. Still, for $1.61, it's a nice occasional morning treat. It's not so much that I feel I'm sinning or trespassing, as that I'm spying. A small, older Asian man does his morning tai chi and exercises in the back parking lot at my Sonic Drive-In. Wax on. Wax off. "Karate Kid" playing at the Sunrise Drive-In Movie!

Accountability

In the frigid winters of adolescent memories I arrived at the high school entrance before daylight in alternating pale green Chevrolets for M-W-F and T-Th. Our dads took turns driving Janice and me. My dad drove a 1954 Chevy automatic. Her dad drove a 1951 three-speed on the column with a windshield visor. A dad would start the car to warm it up at least fifteen minutes before we were to leave. Often, the batteries were plugged in overnight, or they wouldn't have started at all. Both trunks held a snowshovel, a container of sand, jumper cables, and a blanket. The '51 had chains on the tires. The '54 had snowtires. The '54 had an AM radio, but I'm not sure about the '51. Having lived in Texas for fifteen years, I finally quit keeping sand and a shovel in the trunk. The jumper cables are still there, but that's because I have sons. Those sons acquired the sort of cars that needed jumping many times.

When I was teaching preschool classes at the local rec center I was stunned when kids would "play hospital". They would slap "the patient" on the chest with a toy frypan, and yell, "Clear!" I always want to yell, "Clear!" when I use jumper cables. The preschoolers caused my confusion about defrybulators and defibrillators. The kids would also play "Lamaze" and coach each other about breathing and pushing. Then Mr. Potato Head would birth a mini-Potato Head from his rear storage pod bay door. The preschoolers took this in stride, but I was traumatized.

Janice and I have been reminiscing about practice driving with our dads. She wrote, "...I tried to turn the steering wheel (with no power steering) ... This was, of course, after I had killed it a couple times getting to the corner to turn. " Ah, yes. Killing the car. A common experience learning to drive!

When I was teaching my oldest to drive my stick shift minivan up at his high school parking lot, he killed it many, many times. Alas, this is Bush Country. We can carry concealed, but we can't fess up to "killing the car," or "killing the engine". The car "dies". The engine "dies". No one takes verbal responsibility for these inconvenient and unfortunate automotive murders perpetrated by stupidity or inexperience. No one is accountable. I've been laughed at many times in Oklahoma and Texas for using the expression, "I killed the car".

In Nebraska we own up to our transgressions. If the banana barf-yellow rusty 1970 Chevy Nova dies at the corner of 27th and Holdrege everyday on the way home from work due to a mechanical problem that requires opening the hood, unscrewing the butterfly wing nut, and poking a screwdriver into the air intake valve while being honked at by unsympathetic motorists, (not to mention trying not to get your muffler* stuck in the engine causing driver demise by strangulation), we say that the "car died". By contrast, if we have done some really dumb driver move, we admit we "killed the car".

*In this example, "muffler" means a long knit or crocheted scarf worn around the collar of a winter coat. It has nothing to do with Midas. I don't know if it is called a "muffler" down here, because you can almost get through January without even wearing a coat!

Triankles and Awfulgons

Shapes and cut-outs were the class subjects this week. We were looking at Lois Ehlert's brightly-colored book, Color Zoo, with it's layered cut-outs to inspire our creations. Things were going great with circles and squares. When the preschool students started talking about "triankles and awfulgons," I got the flying monkey heebie-jeebies.

Remember when the witch was squashed under the house, and only her striped-socked ankles stuck out? I get this "triankle" mental image of striped socks steam-rollered into perfect triangles.

There's no place like home. If you Google "wicked witch dead", you get a photo of Dick Cheney. Makes sense. Even if you happen to be in Kansas, Dick is one of the reasons I don't think we're in Kansas anymore. It's time to pay more attention to the man behind the curtain! Let's get this awfulgon and his flying monkey henchmen, too, Toto.

Austinized honey bees

The Monday morning preschoolers were sharing their personal anecdotes about insects, arachnids, and superheroes. It was just a normal discussion while we all yawned and tried to get our week into gear. Believe me, preschoolers ALL seem to know someone who has eaten a bug. This doesn't impress me any more. I was impressed when a young girl informed us that she had a beevhive at her house with lots of honey.

No, that is not a typo! We are talking about a real beevhive! I don't know how entomologists have missed the resemblance for so long. One look through the microscope, and the relationship is slap-my-forehead obvious. Tiny flying longhorns!

Observe Exhibit A, the honey bee, then Exhibit B, the Bevo:



If you need to know if your bee colony contains Austinized members, you can follow these instructions for submitting bee samples for identification. It's true that the Texas A&M Department of Entomology and the Texas Cooperative Extension may be unwilling to admit the amazing strength and numbers of Austinized beev colonies due to traditional Texas bee rivalries.

For information about the unrelated Africanized honey bee, and bee smarts in general, TAMU is still the place to go.

And if you would like to learn about the world's largest scarab beetle, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln faculty magazine, The Scarlet, August 25, 2005 issue is pretty amazing.

Dangerous Tellantura and Bambi

Air holes are important, as any child who has ever caught fireflies in a jar knows. My preschool students have been pretending to be explorers, photographers, and biologists in the Amazonian rain forest. They've been drawing air holes on the lids of jars to keep the bugs they've created alive for further study with tiny toy magnifying glasses. The bugs are made out of fun foam, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, irridescent beads, and buttons. We put snips of emerald green raffia into plastic boxes and jars from the Raytheon WASTE recyclables program. Kids still believe that the "grass" in the jar will make the bugs happy, just as we did forty-five years ago. I find this reassuring.

The kids use their Altoids/Rx 35mm cameras to take photos of their bugs, then they scribble about the animals and plants they have seen on their expedition in their teeny-tiny scientific journals with short country club golf pencils. We make sure to carry extra film cannisters filled with rolled up metallic ribbon. We wouldn't want to run out of film on this trip!

My favorite part is writing labels for the bug jars. "Have you identified this insect?," I ask. Amazingly, the child may tell me this specimen is the Dangerous Tellantura that eats green beetles. Other times, the child will say, "huh?"

I refine my interview question. "What kind of bug d'ja think you've got there?" The child explains it's a friendly Rainbow Sparkle Beetle. "Hmmmm," I say in a scholarly review musing voice.

When the second question fails to get an answer I can write on the label, it is time to ask, "What is your bug's name?"

Bambi

Sarah Catherine Margaret Jane

Rockstar Firelight

Thanks to all the folks who save their Altoids tins and other fun recyclables for our survival kits!

Winning word for the week

Comanical is a preschooler word used to describe the giant mechanical rat and other animals in the automated Chuck E. Cheese pizza show. It perfectly captures the maniacal quality of the allegedly comic or child-friendly mechanical characters.

My first visit to a ShowBiz Pizza Place, the early name for a Chuck E. Cheese's, was before I had kids. My friend loved to take her two preschoolers there for lunch, and I was just along for the ride. What a terrific place! First you could overstimulate the kiddies on miniature carnival rides with flashing lights until they were queasy or crabby, then order some bad pizza and watery pop. Take your tray into the darkened Show Room where your shoes stuck to the carpet. Park the youngsters in their booster chairs just in time for a "show" of lifesize animatronics with a rockabilly bear and a nightmare-inducing cheerleader mouse. Take two Excedrin, bundle the kids into their snowsuits, and fasten them into their carseats. Pull out of the parking lot onto Dodge Street, and the chain-reaction barfing begins. The night terrors won't start for a couple nights.

Received a videocassette in the mail when my spouse's nephew was born. Ack. It was a video of his delivery! Thank you so much for sharing.

Received another videocassette a year later. A birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's for a one year-old freaked out by the comanical rat, the blaring music, and an uncomfortably loaded diaper, and a large collection of aunts and uncles forced to eat bad pizza and Excedrin.

I used to worry about the part in the black and white televised Nutcracker ballet "where the mice come in". It wasn't as scary as the Oz flying monkeys, but very worrisome when I was a preschooler. I would have to really squint, or even leave the room, when the mice came in. The cheerleading Mitzi Mozzarella mechanical mouse was way scarier, and I was in my late twenties by then!

This is just to let my sons know that if they ever get married and procreate, I would prefer that they not celebrate special occasions at Chuck E. Cheese's. Let's just say this future grandma would rather watch a delivery room video while have dental work done in the downtown Greyhound bus terminal than ever see the comanicals again.

Pest Control

My preschool students presented me with a garden poster with their school photos glued onto a drawing they each made. They were extremely excited to tell me what they had drawn to be their character in the picture. "I'm a butterfly. I'm a tulip. I'm a worm. I'm the sun. I'm a snail..." My favorite was the little boy who told me he was a talk-roach.

Went to the condo association meeting last evening which quickly disintegrated into a complaint session on landscaping and pest control issues. Some residents were touting an organic magic elixir which when poured around all the foundations would spin straw into gold. No, wait. That's a different story. This fabulous product allegedly forms a magic force field that repels all insects without being the least bit harmful to humans or dachsunds. When I suggested we confer with the local bug expert from Texas A&M Extension, who happens to be a friend of mine, before trading the condo cow for a handful of magic beans, I got put on the landscaping committee to listen to residents' concerns. Just shoot me. Preschool talk-roaches are cute. Perpetually malcontent talk-roaches with too much time and too little to do are not cute. I may have to sell my condo and move to another town. That's the escape route of many previous association board members and committee members. They may even have a safe house I can use! I will hide under the refrigerator and only come out in the dark of night, then scuttle back if a light is switched on.

Rumpelstiltskin was at the meeting. Our little condominium complex's version of Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, our former board president who went "a little funny in the head", showed up with a long list of rants.


If we can't get a restraining order against Rumpelstiltskin, maybe we can spray with amazing OrangeGuard.

No, No, Cyrano!

The last few minutes of a preschool art class get a bit hectic. The first kids who finish the project and wash their hands need something constructive to occupy them so they won't tackle each other. A few kids are still finishing their art, and need my encouragement toward that end. The line of kids waiting to wash hands needs my attention so they don't wipe their painty hands on each other.

Usually I place a couple activities on the big floor rug for people with clean hands; a building toy, a book, finger puppets, a puzzle, or the ever popular bucket of dinosaur postcards. We also have some lovely smooth square samples of marble counter tops to stack or sort.

Today, though, the kids asked me to get the Drama Nose. Since our program is half art and half drama, my brain veered off on the theatrical instead of the practical. What the kids wanted was:

Antibiotics are Our Friends

One of my kindergarten students informed me that she needed a Kleenex because she has a "Sonics infection". Man, oh man! I've had those before, and they are the pits. When I lived in Oklahoma, I had one massive Sonics infection that took six months of super-antibiotics to smite.

My Hungarian allergist insisted that I snork on a piece of aluminum foil, then rush it to her office for analysis. She referred me to a German Nose Guy, who x-rayed my Sonics several times. Sure wish I had those x-rays now for collage purposes. The Nose Guy did an otorhinolarangoscopy, which is like having Lewis and Clark drive a Humvee through your nasal cavaties only to crash into your deviated septum at a remarkable speed for such a heavy vehicle. I fainted, which further convinced him that I was a truly pathetic specimen of a woman not fit to bear his sons. Next he sent me for a CT scan. Whoa. I really wish I had those images for a collage!

The Nose Guy looked like an older version of an evil hospital orderly on "Edge of Night" named Sharkey back during my soap addiction of 1981. I am proud to say that I've been soap free for twenty+ years, one day at a time.

Just when the Nose Guy was planning a surgical assault my Sonics cleared up. He was crushed, but couldn't show it, of course. He was really looking forward to using a laser weed whacker* to enlarge my sinus openings, and breaking my nose to straighten it just for fun. He asked me how and when I had broken my nose. I didn't even know I had broken it, but I'm pretty sure it was when I rode the saucer sled over the retaining wall.