Walk and talk, Suzy

Since the 1995 installation of Dale Chihuly's colorful glass swirls in the Hart Window of the Dallas Museum of Art's atrium, I've imagined the pieces as swirling flowers and sea creatures. They usually remind me of the amazing twirling plates act on the Ed Sullivan Show in the Sixties. Last night, for the first time ever, I contemplated square dance skirts and petticoats, Dr. Pepper and Shiner Bock bottle caps while staring up at the art.


Image respectfully reproduced from the Chihuly website.

The DMA was celebrating Texas bluebonnets and swing music, and showing the classic movie, "Giant" with James Dean, Rock Hudson, and Elizabeth Taylor. Grandpas in western shirts were twirling little bitty granddaughters on the dance floor to the music of Maurice Anderson and his band, "The Dukes of Western Swing". The event had pulled in a different demographic for a Friday evening of special activities. Sharp marketing!

My companions were adamant about their allergies to "country music," and afraid they would break out in itchy rashes from prolonged exposure. Once upon a time I would have rejected it without listening, too. Now I just wear a great big smile, and never do look sour.

Sitting around the table and watching the dance floor, stages of life twirl before me. How wonderful to be those lucky little girls dancing with their attentive grandpas. Party and dance in the evening, and have a dish of butter brickle ice cream, too. Swirling in your dance skirt, you are the center of the known universe, pulling everyone into your personal movie with your amazing gravity!

Another guy, hopefully a gentleman, holds your elbow on your first encounter with inebriation. It's a funny dance, but the steps are tricky. He makes you a cup of Folger's freeze-dried instant coffee and sings softly, "Oh, walk and talk, Suzy; walk and talk Suzy. Walk and talk, Suzy; walk and talk Suzy." How does he know this incongruous dose of Bob Wills is the best way to sober up?

Three sons and a freeze-dried if not instant-divorce, it is time to get out of Dodge. A solo road trip to Caprock and Palo Duro canyons in the Texas panhandle yields and unexpected connection to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Spend a little time in Turkey, Texas where Wills was a barber by day and musician by night.

When the boys were little we had a cassette tape of railroad songs, truck songs, and songs about Oklahoma and Texas. It had "San Antone" and "Take Me Back to Tulsa" by Bob Wills' band. They probably don't remember it at all, amidst all the "Wee Melodies" and singing multiplication tables we listened to on road trips. Maybe a little fondness for Texas swing will show up in their eclectic music tastes eventually. And, psst! Their mommy still says they are too young to marry!

Take Me Back To Tulsa - Bob Wills/Tommy Duncan

Where's that girl with the red dress on? Some folks calls her Dinah;
Stole my heart away from me, way down in Louisana.

Take Me back to Tulsa, I'm too young to marry;
Take me back to Tulsa, I'm too young to marry.

Oh, walk and talk Suzy, walk and talk Suzy;
Walk and talk Suzy, walk and talk Suzy.

We always wear a great big smile, we never do look sour.
Travel all over the country, playing music by the hour.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Blooming mommies

Growing blooming mommies can be done easily in most home gardens with the proper cultivation techniques. The preschool students love the idea of a blooming mommy with flowers growing out of her head. Today they each made a portrait of their own blooming mommy on the seed packets for our special Mommy Seeds.

The Mother's Day projects are nearing completion. Like the Little Red Hen, the preschoolers grew the plants last summer, collected the seeds last fall, saved the plastic applesauce containers from their lunches this winter, drilled holes in the containers this spring, then filled them with potting soil, planted the seeds for the flowers, and marked the flowers with plant stakes. The Mommy Seed packets are the Mother's Day cards to accompany the gift of flowers.

The children are learning about cultivation, which they define as "taking care of the things we plant". At the same time, the children are being cultivated.

I've spread out my old American Heritage Dictionary, turned to cultivate and cultivation. Preschool is all about forming, refining, educating, fostering, and nurturing. To educate, we improve and prepare, plow and fertilize, tend and till.

Cultivation can also mean "socialization through training and education to develop one's mind or manners". Preschool is a never-ending battle for acculturation, which is "the adoption of the behavior patterns and norms of the surrounding culture". We aren't talking about diversity and multicultural awareness here. That is the territory of my eldest son working with university students. We are talking about not picking noses in public, and remembering to flush the toilet, the behavioral norms of the surrounding population of human beings! It's often a harrowing experience.

Till means to prepare for the raising of crops by plowing, harrowing, and fertilizing. It means to work at, to labor. It is definitely hard work to get preschoolers to stop picking their noses and start flushing the toilet. The word "till" seems to carry the frustrations of hundreds of generations of farmers on its back.

My young sons each went through a John Deere phase of fascination with farm implements. As a MOBO, I excelled in the choo-choo railroad fascination phase, and performed bravely in the truck stop big rig phase. I could identify every Matchbox car pulled from the three-gallon tub by year, model, and color. I really knew my hook-and-ladder trucks in the firefighter stage. I was damn tolerant in the military vehicle phase, if I do say so myself, waiting out G.I. Joe. I was never very good at farm implements, aircraft ID, or motorcycles, though. If I crammed for the test I could pass, but I never retained the information!

Harrowing experiences sometimes require using a plunger instead of a farm implement. A harrow is used to break and level plowed ground. It's a farm implement with heavy disks and teeth. To harrow is to inflict great distress or torment on the mind. Or perhaps on the foot. My mom used to receive an annual Christmas letter from an old high school chum. The best year the letter recounted the farmer dropping a sharp harrow upon his foot, but having to pull the harrow teeth out of the punctured foot so he could drive himself to the regional hospital because his wife couldn't shift gears on the manual transmission pick-up truck.

Sometimes on the commute home from work I chant, "It was a tough day, but at least I didn't drop the harrow on my foot." Being a mommy is a tough job, too. There were a lot of days when I felt I'd dropped the harrow on my foot as a parent. The most difficult years were those when I felt unable to shift gears.

Fortunately, there were many more days when I felt like flowers were blooming out of my head!


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

I say flamingo, you say flamango

Montessori teachers and Scrabble junkies just can't help it. We see a group of movable letters, and we have to make new words. The sign originally had birthday wishes for the recipient of the shocking flamingo flocking, "WE FLEW IN FOR ____'S B'DAY".

A movable alphabet

The children were thrilled to find a pink flamingo flock in front of the school when they arrived. Some really believed the flamingos flew to school. Some fell in love!

A few plastic flamingos migrated from the front lawn to the playground. One preschooler wrapped her arms around a bird's neck and proclaimed, "mingo baby mine!"

The second morning we rearranged the sign letters to spell, "WE BIRDS PLAY NOW". We fixed a group of plastic birds inside a sparkly hula hoop. Plans to have jump-roping flamingos met technical difficulties.

"Mingos play!," the preschooler shrieked with glee. Usually we worry about baby birds imprinting on human rescuers. This time we were concerned that our little student had imprinted on the plastic flamingo. Would she be distraught when the birthday birds were collected by the rent-a-flock folks?

We didn't get a chance to arrange FLY BIRDS NOW on the sign this morning before the plastic flamingos were gone. Heading out to the playground for a session digging in the garden dirt, the preschooler lamented, "mangos gone, mangos gone". So sad, so sad. Mango must be the past tense of flamingo.

My sons never fell into a zoo flamingo lagoon, not even Danger Baby. Quite surprising, come to think of it. They had no accidental close-up encounters with roseate spoonbills or scarlet ibis in any aviary either. We were lucky to live near good zoos when the boys were little, and to receive family zoo memberships from generous grandparents so we could visit often.



The boys drew many maps of the zoos they knew so well in Omaha, Oklahoma City, and Dallas. They also designed some fantasy zoos based on their preferences and the need for frequent pit stops. They knew to put the picniks by the Aveary, Ellafuts, and Zeberas, but not too far from the rest rooms. The KagaRoos and Crokadils and Pigs should definitely be close to the Gift Shop (and more rest rooms)!



The Mingos and Mangos should be placed close to the playground and petting zoo! Should you need to draw a flamingo, the recipe is raindrop+S+4. Try blending purple, red, orange, and white with your pink for feather variations.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

ESL by Avodart

I rarely turn on my television, so visiting my dad is like learning a foreign language by the total immersion method. If a family arrived in the United States and wanted to learn English by watching television, the first phrase they would master would be, "ask your doctor about." Soon they would be able to recite "in the rare event of an erection lasting more than four hours, seek immediate medical attention to avoid long-term injury."

True, Dad's viewing tends toward ESPN, the Golf Channel, the Weather Channel, CNN Headline News,and MSNBC, with some local news broadcasts thrown in. The ads on those stations repeat ad nauseum. I'm somewhat embarrassed to report that the most effective ads for holding my attention (although not longer than four hours) are the Avodart museum miniature model ads.

When I grow up, I would love to work in a museum creating exhibits. Museums always feel like home to me. So even though the actor has to make frequent trips to the restroom, I think he's got a cool job.

My small sons loved the army miniatures at the 45th Infantry Museum, and the great model railroad layouts at the Omniplex in Oklahoma City and the Union Pacific museum in downtown Omaha. Their all-time greatest hit was the huge miniature model at the Alamo. When will the Avodart guy remember the Alamo??? Maybe the next ads will feature the prostrate actor creating a miniature Iraq for the Bush Library!

Just what is the tag line for the commercial? Our hypothetical language-learning family and I can never decide if the man has a going problem, a growing problem, or a groin problem. Learning English on t.v. is going to be grueling.


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Charley Harper's Desert

There we are in 1992 inside La Ventana, the grand stone arch in El Malpais National Monument. Danger Baby is on the left, then me, the Woolly Mammoth, and Mr. Speech and Debate. If ever I was going to post CollageMama's legs online, the 1992 legs are probably the best. Back then I was running 10K races and weighed about 120 pounds. True, I was suffering debilitating insomnia, eating disorders, and panic attacks, and my marriage was beginning to shatter.

Otherwise, it was a great New Mexico vacation! In the visitor center shop, my youngest and I were fascinated by a poster of birds and animals around a desert cactus. Although it would add to the complications of the flight home with three young sons, we had to have the poster.



Charley Harper's poster of desert animals for the National Park Service remains one of our favorite things. Later that summer of '92, the Woolly Mammoth would break his arm, and then start kindergarten. Pretty amazing that the poster is tacked up in his bedroom, three homes and sixteen years later, as he's now a junior in college. More than his brothers, he has chosen and arranged everything in his space, so I know he is still fond of the poster design.

We have an identical Desert poster in our preschool classroom, and it has the same intrigue for the students. They love finding the nocturnal and diurnal animals and naming the birds. I'm amazed to find that the poster is still available through the National Park Service for only nine dollars. Maybe I should order some back-ups for future generations!


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

The parsnip stands alone

What would Beatrix Potter do this weekend to mollify the preschool class rabbit? Offer parsley and parsnips? Lettuces and salsify?

Norton only wants to chew on items in my condo that are expressly forbidden. Most of the time he is quite happy sleeping in his cage with his head upon a parsnip. I felt bad about my tough love approach the first night of his visit, so I got a small bag of parsnips at Albertsons. This was a first, as I'm generally afraid of white root vegetables. It's a long story involving creamed turnips and future in-laws, but I'm out of therapy now, and we just won't mention it.

I cut up two parsnips for the ham-bone crockpot soup, and gave one to Norton. Then I went back to hoeing just like Mr. MacGregor. Norton snorted at the parsnip, and went back to flinging hay around his cage. Clearly, he was not placated. I offered him three delicious and nutritious cooked edamame, and he dumped them to the cage bottom newspaper. He'd already made his opinion of fresh green beans known. Nothing was going to do but a carrot, an apple core, and a celery heart, pronto!

Two days later, the parsnip is still vegetabla non grata. My soup was delicious, but Norton still snorts at his veggie. He would rather hide in a watering can than nibble on that parsnip. I haven't asked about his former in-laws since I don't want to search the Yellow Pages for a rabbit psychologist.

My young sons and I loved listening to cassette tapes of Bunnicula stories on long car rides. James and Deborah Howe's stories of the vampire rabbit presumed to suck the juice out of vegetables would have us laughing so hard our seatbelts hurt. The Celery Stalks At Midnight is one of my all-time favorite book titles.

Just as an aside, I was sad to read the obituary for Suzanne Pleshette this weekend. It seems completely plausible that her Emily Hartley would give Bob Newhart her support and sardonic advice for dealing with Norton's parsniphobia. Suzanne Pleshette ranks second to Barbara Feldon for favorite voices.

Band-Aid Aisle

Wok with me to the Walgreens bandage aisle. It's a complicated place with far more choices than necessary. There are so many options that your wound will very likely be invaded by a staph infection before you can find the right sort of Band-Aid.

I had too many things on my mind the evening I poured the frozen broccoli into the wok's heated oil. We all know that is a no-no, and I'm sure my seventh grade home ec teacher, Mrs. Starr, is shaking her finger at me right now. Well, duh, the ice and oil exploded, giving me an ugly burn on my pinkie finger and wrist. Now that it has healed, I can share both my stupid moment and my amazement about bandage varieties.

For over a decade my minivan glove compartment contained a box of 1990 lime green Ninja Turtle bandages. One Ninja Turtle bandage remained in the zippered inside pouch of my purse until I had a son in grad school. After 1990, my sons had matured, if that's the word, with far fewer small Band-Aid-able kiss-to-make-it-better scrapes. They advanced to occasional major injuries requiring casts, crutches, x-rays, and collarbone contraptions

In my own preschool years I wore many Band-Aids on my knees. My favorites were shiny bandages in solid green, yellow, blue, and red. My parents called them "battle ribbons". Been Googling in search of those circa 1957 vintage bandages without success. Think they must predate both the Band-Aid "Stars and Strips", and the Curad "Battle Ribbon" tins. I've appreciated the unofficial online Band-Aid history museum and the Johnson & Johnson and Band-Aid websites.

Large antibiotic Band-Aids don't stick very well. I needed them because my wrist was irritated by sleeves and mousepads. Eventually, my wrist was irritated by the adhesive of those Band-Aids, too.

Tapered finger Band-Aids are a useful invention. The shape allows for wrapping around bends and knuckles. They are a useful addition to the home medicine cabinet.

I was really torn trying to project a boring, grown-up facade after my painful mistake. What I really wanted to sport were the Walgreens brand Crayon adhesive strips that reminded me of those old "battle ribbons" of my childhood. No Ninja Turtles from the glove compartment for me.


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

What Would Jesus Laminate?

I made two expeditions into unfamiliar territory this week in the pursuit of twenty-five cents per foot self-serve laminating. Laminating is a soul-searching effort for me, as I have to weigh the non-recyclable and non-biodegradable effect on paper against the sturdiness, weather-readiness, and preservation of the art or teaching items being laminated. Plus, I have to go to the friendly neighborhood Christian bookstore, home-schooling supply center, and vacation Bible school headquarters to get the best do-it-yourself laminating price.

It's a busy time at the bookstore. The woman ahead of me in the check-out line had her entire cart filled with identical ceramic nativity scenes that looked like Fred Flintstone's house spray-painted with gold glitter paint. The woman ahead of her wanted to use expired limit-one-per-customer coupons to buy three soft Christian rock music cds.

The three kids behind me in line were whining and badgering their mother because she had only said they could LOOK at the new "Veggie Tales" video, not that they would BUY it. Down the aisle another family values drama was being performed about a boy's desire for a Bibleman laser sword. I thought it was just kids in Target who threw tantrums over GI Joe, Star Wars, and Disney Princess videos. When my sons acted like that we knew it was time to read The Berenstain Bears Get the Gimmes.




Bible action figures are hot toys. Who wouldn't want the Almighty Heroes action set? The characters have the physique of the Incredible Hulk, but cuter tunics and slingshots. I'm sure they can be entwined through the chainlink baseball backstop the same way my youngest posed his GI Joes. They can be buried in the playground gravel and lost just as easily as a Ninja Turtle.



We agonize as parents over the toys we buy and media influences on our children. If we let our children play with toy guns, are we raising the schoolshooters and mallshooters of the next decade? If we give our children plastic action figures with Bible verses, will they become the peacemakers, the philosophers, the charitable and ethical leaders we desperately need? If our daughters dress Queen Esther and Deborah the Warrior dolls in their fashion sets with they live with more purity and purpose than if they played with Bratz and Barbie dolls? If our son prefers dressing Joseph in his amazing coat to putting on the Full (silver plastic) Armor of God playset, will he become gay? Is there really any difference between wearing a Power Rangers costume trick-or-treating, or wearing a Samson Super-Muscles costume to the Sunday School fall harvest carnival?



I don't know. My sons are grown now. They are already teacher, administrator, photographer, law student, volunteer, writer, artist, runner, chef, and traveler. They will work in many other fields in their lifetimes. They have a core set of values guiding their relations with others, a respect for nature, an inner motivation, an appreciation of art and the lessons of history, and they are kind to their mommy.

So what toys do they insist that I never give or throw away? The "good wood rifles" and the Legos. The toys of imagination, role-playing, empowerment, and construction--and of precious memories.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Spidey trading cards

Much as I wanted to make arachnid cootie-catcher/fortune-tellers for my students and coworkers this Halloween, the project kept getting more ugly every time I stabbed at it. I have great digital photos of the spiders in the school garden, but my Adobe Photoshop Elements program has ghastly hick-ups and burps that make photo editing an ordeal since I'm now using the Microsoft Vista operating system.

Going upstairs to water the jade plants, and hacking through the artifacts, USB cords, and archives of three grown sons, I was reminded of Topps baseball and Magic trading cards. The upstairs condo repository is a scary place, but has more potential for greatness than a pending presidential library at SMU. [The jade plants and Christmas cactus may or may not survive.]

The Halloween spider trading cards are ready to print and give to my students. My own kids learned bartering and negotiating skills, and concepts of abundance and scarcity, not to mention a few carnival midway cons by trading baseball cards with each other.



Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!

Sir Walter Scott
© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

My favorite Wild West characters

Why do cowboys need guns? Only to shoot the rattlesnakes disturbing the cattle. Why do bison need Tonka bulldozers? Why do alligators ride bucking broncos? Is Two Hat reading his Wanted poster? What do these cowboys eat? Beef, red beans, and coffee, of course!


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Where is his mommy?

The bright green anole walked down the black cast iron birdfeeder hook this hideously hot and humid afternoon. Less than two and a half inches long from its nose to the end of its pencil line tail, and maybe a quarter inch from right foot toe to left foot toe--much too little to be unsupervised on the patio playground. Where is his mommy? Is she drinking iced tea over on a shady bench with the other mothers and chatting about potty training? He's going to burn his toes, his tail, his tummy on that broiling metal slippery slide!

Everything is shimmering in the heat, and the sweat is dripping in my eyes. The little lizard is Jeffy, almost three, insisting that he try the McDonald's playground slippery slide in Tyler, Texas on a day just like this--1985. Burning the back of his legs although the metal slide was less than four feet tall. The horrible parenting moment still blistering my conscience this month as little Jeffy turns twenty-five.




© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

The Little Marmots

My tiny student demands to look at the "Marmot" book before her nap. I'm surprised that she knows about these North American mammals. Of course I was equally surprised when she counted all the glittery spots on her princess t-shirt in clear non-native English, and when she was able to name all the colors in English.



I'd never heard of marmots until I encountered a colony of the fat, chirping mammals at an abandoned mine in the San Juan National Forest above Durango, Colorado on a newlywed backpacking trip. Their sound was eerie, and they were clustered around every rock and inside every decaying outhouse on the Kennebec Pass trail.

According to the Colorado Division of Wildlife, marmots are fat, grizzled, waddling relatives of ground squirrels and woodchucks. They are social animals of the alpine meadows employing a system of alarm calls against predators. It is easy to see how they might be mistaken for mermaids!



My student actually wants the book about Disney's mermaid Ariel. She isn't interested in driving up the rutted Forest Service road to the trailhead, and probably won't knock the oil pan off the underside of her puke yellow Chevy Nova driving back down to civilization after her hike.





In an equally confusing moment, two year-old Danger Baby demanded "the 'care book" before naptime from his grandmother while I was in the hospital with his new baby brother. Mom looked everywhere for a Care Bears book, but Danger Baby really wanted Dr. Seuss's story about the pale green pants, "What Was I Scared Of?," in The Sneetches and Other Stories. I bet pudgy, chirping, little marmots in pale green pants would make a heckuva children's video!




© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Don't Let It Be Forgot...

...Before there was a spot,
For one brief shining moment,
I had clean Carpetlot!

Looking forward to seeing Lerner and Loewe's "Camelot" at the Dallas Summer Musicals this weekend. I'll be leaving my Spot-Shot carpet stain remover at home. My favorite mud-tracking knights are grown up now. I could only find armored photos of two of the guys. Any Guenevere would fall for them. Still, over the years, they've been pretty tough on carpets.



Went to see the 1967 movie version with my junior high girlfriends. Seems like it played at the Varsity Theater, and it may have had an intermission. Movie intermissions went the way of the dinosaurs not long after.

The 1960 Broadway production starred Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet. Two out of three of them could sing. That was many more than in the movie with Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, and Franco Nero.

Richard Harris also "sang" the weird 1968 hit song, "MacArthur Park". That song pops into my head when the preschoolers leave loosely-capped drinks and unsupervised choices to melt and ooze in their lunchboxes:

MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down--
Who thought it was a good idea to pack a popsicle in a lunchbox anyway???
Someone's crumbled cupcake made a stain. I don't think that I can take it...

Oh, no!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Tinkering with the new blog

I'm tinkering these days as I improve the layout for my visual art blog, MamaCollages. The New Blogger makes creating a blog so much easier than when I first made one right after the dinosaurs died out.

I just love Blogger's new layout widgets, and the little screwdriver/wrench icon. The icon reminds me of the times my little sons would play "barbershop" and style my hair with the tools from their Fisher Price toolbox.

The boys were also fond of playing "Braum's," because Braum's was their favorite restaurant. Playing Braums required constructing a restaurant out of the wooden blocks, then parking ALL the Hot Wheels cars at the block restaurant. Only then would they set up a table and toy dishes for their only customer. Mom would be the customer for hours at a time--ordering, receiving my order, eating, having more coffee and pretend ice cream, and paying. This type of play is so important for children learning the concept of sequence.

I never minded that the boys had the blocks, dishes, and Hot Wheels all out at the same time, as long as they tried to separate them during the clean-up. It drove my spouse nuts, though. Whether I'm creating a piece of art, a new blog, or an edible meal, I always have several types of playthings out at once! Considering and combining all the different possibilities is what collage is all about.

The Sonic DriveIn down my street has a monthly muscle car show in its big parking lot on a Saturday night. It looks ever so much like the Hot Wheels parked at the block restaurant, and always makes me smile.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Soft puppy dog hair

I love it! My little student came to class with a fresh #1 clippers haircut. What a wonderful sign of spring! His two big brothers had haircuts, too.

We called the #1 clipper cut "soft puppy dog hair" when my sons were little. It drives the ladies wild!! Mommies, first-grade teachers, even school principals can't keep from patting the heads of little guys with new soft puppy dog haircuts.



(Spring 1989)

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Rob From the Rich

I forget, Robin. Are we good guys or bad guys?"



My kids loved the 1973 Disney animated "Robin Hood" with animal characters, and Phil Harris doing the voice of Little John. By Disney standards, it was light stuff. No orphans or forest fires. No nightmares about being swallowed by a whale or turned into a donkey. (No farting warthogs, thank you very much.) I actually purchased a VHS tape of the movie, (or maybe it was Beta!), and let them watch it once every month or so. Then my Merry Men mini-guys would go merrily off to wander in Sherwood Forest down the hall to outsmart the sheriff of Nottingham . Wearing sawed-off pillowcases over their PJs, green felt hats, paper towel tube quivers slung over their shoulders for the suction-cup arrows, a sockful of pebbles tucked into a $3.99 black plastic gun belt now missing its holsters and pistols, and maybe the "Special Bunny" or a sippy cup, they were ready for action. With only the slightest of adjustments and additions to this gear, the guys could also play Peter Pan, Camelot, the Oklahoma Land Rush, Plains Indians, California Gold Rush prospectors, and Ice Age cave men. For instance, my youngest might need a juice box and a cup of dry Cherrios instead of the Special Bunny and sippy cup. The sofa cushions might become a fort long enough for me to change the sheets on the bed with the stagecoachesque headboard, or scrub the bathtub moat.

The bed with the weird stagecoach headboard also made a very fine hook and ladder firetruck, or a covered wagon for Laura and Mary Ingalls, with Jack, the brindle bulldog, leaving the Big Woods of Wisconsin to travel to the Prairie or the Banks of Plum Creek. Didn't matter that Laura and Mary were girls. My sons knew good, brave characters to play when they heard about them.

Faint heart never won fair lady,
Little John advises Robin. Can't quite pin it down, but this seems to be a very old proverb. Faulty bridges don't seem to woo fair maidens, either. A young gentleman of my acquaintance is having trouble with his eight year-old dental Maryland Bridge falling out of his mouth at inconvenient moments. This causes him to hiss like the Terry Thomas narrated snake/henchman in the movie. It puts a dent in his self-confidence, and a crimp in his whirlwind romance when the fake tooth gets stuck in a sandwich.

Unfortunately, remedies are expensive. Might be time to trade in the quiver and sippy cup for a dusty felt hat and a Sara Lee Butter Streusel coffee cake aluminum pan for some serious prospecting.

Catwoman I'm Not

I'm allergic to onions, bananas, and cats. I'm careful to avoid all of them in my diet. I'm not allergic to coconut, artificial cheese-flavored alleged food products, or black jelly beans, but I would be if I could. I'm equally careful to avoid them in my diet. You don't want to know why I have these intense aversions, but I will say that two of them involve chain-reaction carsickness on hot vinyl backseats.

Back when I still lived in "the house" with the boys, we were visited by Danger Kitties. I hadn't thought about the Danger Kitties in years. They kept trying to climb the screen of our sliding patio door, and would get stuck several feet off the ground, and mewl at surprising volume until unhooked from the screen.

The Danger Kitties were born in the rotting storage shed across the alley. The Boat Boys who lived in that house were oblivious to the presence of feral cats in their shed. The Boat Boys used to sit out in the large motor boat parked in their driveway, drinking beer and listening to loud music. One morning I got all three boys buckled into the Mazda MPV minivan, opened the garage door, started backing out to drive them to school, and found the motor boat blocking the alley. No Boat Boys were home, of course, only feral Danger Kitties incapable of moving the motor boat. Hadn't thought about that particular weirdness in years.

My youngest is in the college scholarship savage jungle hunt. It's part tsetse flies, and part high stakes Texas hold-em poker. We have to play the odds to hit the big money. He's the third child of divorced parents. If you think there's a big chunk of wisely-invested college savings socked away for him, you would be seriously deluded.

In fairy tales it is often the third son who manages to convert the inheritance of a cat and a burlap bag into marriage to the king's beautiful daughter. This son will land on his feet wherever life throws him. He will respond to my anxieties and micromanaging with smug detachment from the warm hearth in front of his computer screen. He will trick the giant into becoming a mouse, and charm the miller's daughter into driving him around town in her dad's new Mini Cooper. Plus, he will have thick, luxurious hair without even earning it. He's already clawed up the couch, and I still let him live here.

Generations

A solitary Christmas Day seems like a the most difficult thing to endure when you are newly divorced. This is my ninth Christmas since the divorce. I have not been alone every year, as there were a couple times my ex was off in some place like Armenia or Kosovo on Christmas. Still, I have come to enjoy this day of peace in my house, if not on earth. I've been going full tilt ever since my classes ended, so the lull is very welcome.

Growing up I often had the feeling that my backyard (so basically The Earth) was resting under a thick blanket of snow in winter. Winter doesn't ever seem like a time of death, but as a call to slow down, wrap up, and take time to rest. Last night after the gifts I fell asleep in front of the fireplace wrapped in a heavy blanket with the voices and laughter of my sons in the background. After all the Christmasses being sure to have the right batteries on hand for the new toys, it was very precious to recharge my own batteries that way.

For ten years my Christmas season has officially begun when my friend unwraps the peanut nativity scene her son made in preschool. I have my own markers of the season, but it is always reassuring to know the peanut Joseph, Mary, and Baby Jesus have survived another year. Today we archived the peanut nativity scene against the unthinkable. The shoebox is getting pretty fragile. Peanuts aren't forever. Neither are digital technology or human memory, but the meaning of Christmas is timeless. We just want the peanuts to stick around for a long time with the memories of our children as preschoolers.


When we went walking Thursday we found a credit card on the ground. Since I couldn't find the name in the phone book, I mailed the card back to Shell in Houston. Today we were surprised to find two drivers licenses for the same person on our walk. It really hit me that this man was born in 1923 like my dad. I hope he is okay. Why are the contents of a wallet lying in the leaves and snow? Was he robbed? Is he deceased? There he is looking at me in the more recent license photo. He lives, or lived in another town. I've written him a letter and sent him the licenses. He haunts the edges of my holiday.

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?

Fishing lines, tackle boxes, and small fry

Browsing the new book shelf at the library is sometimes the best way for me to think up new art projects. One day I found this book by James Prosek with lovely watercolor illustrations of fish and fishing gear. There's not much of a story, but it fit in with lines, hats, and watercolors, all themes we've been exploring in preschool classes. I like the punch line of the book. What the child really needs for "a good day's fishing" is a hat. Hats are good things. They keep the sun off our faces and ears, and shade our eyes so we can see where the fish are hiding under water.

When my kids were five, two, and newborn, we went fishing at Aunt Phyl and Uncle Bob's cabin. I still laugh remembering Uncle Bob's pronouncement about little Michael, age two and a half: "I like Mike. He eats fish. He wears hats. And he's ornery!"

The first week of this project we did crayon line drawings of ourselves fishing. We glued coffee stir straws for poles and buttons for bobbers. We practiced cutting some metallic ribbon to make the shiny fish under water, and then painted our pictures with liquid watercolors. We pantomimed a fishing trip with casting, watching the bobber, reeling in the line, and even releasing the fish carefully back into the pond. Might as well teach some fishing etiquette while I have everybody's attention!

The second week each child made a can of worms and a tackle box. Most of the tackle boxes were egg carton halves, but some were boxes from the Raytheon W.A.S.T.E. give-away. The worms were cut of soft foam. The bobbers were mismatched plastic Easter eggs that so many people have donated. We cut "fishing nets" from the plastic nets that held the eggs or fresh cherry tomatoes. We made hooks from donated bright-colored wire. The kids' little fingers were working on all kinds of fine motor skills, but they didn't know it. They were too into the pretending. It was time to make spinner lures for catching perch. We threaded buttons, and pieces cut from clear plastic report covers and from mylar packaging (again W.A.S.T.E.) onto wires, and twisted the wire ends together. Threading and twisting are tricky. You have to concentrate and persevere!

Fly lures for catching brook trout were the best. The kids poked small feathers into pony beads. Talk about your steady eye-hand coordination practice! I hope someday these kids will be tying real flies!

Next week we'll read Curious George Goes Fishing. Then we will make little frying pans out of clay for a teeny tiny fish fry. If you ask real nice and bring homemade cookies, we will invite you to the picnic.

I was sad this afternoon. An eight-year-old told me he couldn't tie anything. He said his mom and dad always tie his shoes. Good golly! He's got a tv in his room, all the video games on earth, and a limo ride for his birthday. Please parents! Give your child the time and the need to develop basic competencies for himself! If you always tie the shoes or zip the jacket because you are in a hurry, how will your child ever gain the skills?

Now excuse me. I've got to put a new worm on my hook.