Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

  • Genealogy is a curse

    I keep dipping into my genealogy. My Mom became interested in genealogy at my age, too. I don’t know why, perhaps we both realize that when your immediate relatives die off it’s comforting to think that you are at least distantly connected to other people.

    Of course, then you find out that these other people you are connected to were slave traders, and that’s awful. Not my branch though, right? The slave traders, not my branch. Also, the branch with the abolitionists and poets and artists and writers, also not my branch, damnit. No, I am of the getting First Lady Florence Harding knocked up when she was young and the drinking away all the coal money branch.

    The annoying thing is that my branch is crap while the slave traders have the best stuff and the best relatives.

    Best stuff: Evidently they had a Federal-area tasteful mansion called Linden Place an easy drive from the (gaudy) Breakers mansion, but then I would have to hear about the slave trade perpetrated by my cousins ten times removed.

    Best People: At some point one of the slave traders’ descendants married Ethel Barrymore. That puts me as a ninth cousin once removed from Drew Barrymore. That makes me particularly sad. I like her. I imagine she won’t be going on an episode of one of those roots-tracing shows.

    I’m sure it’s just a coincidence we both have an ample jaw.

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  • Very excited for the symphony again

    Halloween Symphony. Will the orchestra dress up? Probably not. But wouldn’t that be great? I will be in costume as a person who knows enough about music to attend the symphony. Putting the “phony” in symphony.

    The last half will be Beethoven’s 6th, the pastoral, but before that they build the theme with Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Samuel Barber is most famous for Adagio for Strings. It is the Theme to Sad.

    So, Barber wrote the piece this YouTube contributor aptly tags as “Saddest Song Ever” and he also wrote what we’ll hear tomorrow while his FATHER was DYING.

    So, really looking forward to that.

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  • Thursday Paint Progress: 10/29/2026

    This is what it was last week:

    This is what it is now:

    This is what it is supposed to be:

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    Some re-drawing taking place so the contrast starts making sense.

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  • Hashtag-not-my-sexiest-man-alive

    Noah Wylie has been voted Sexiest Man Alive by People Magazine, and we are not having it. (Granted, that link is from Fox news, so take that into account.)

    My complaint is not the same general complaint you will find in the article. I feel the beard disqualifies him. It covers half his face. I mean, I could be sexiest woman alive if I were wearing a burqa.

    We all know why men adopt beards. Weak chin, double chin, fine, I get it. Let’s say two points off for that. I have a dimpled doctor who’s trying out a beard and I tried to point out that the beard is covering up his dimples, ten points for dimples, c’mon.

    I’m sure People Magazine will argue that it’s all about the sexiness involved in championing emergency room staff but sorry, he’s cheating. Not having it.

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  • In which we have a breakthrough at the counselor

    I had my second visit with a counselor I am seeing solo in an effort to ease some recent friction with Gary. (Gary doesn’t attend these meetings. Our private arguments are hard enough. I don’t want to have those same arguments in front of a professional.)

    I was complaining that for a long time – years – Gary would come in and kiss me goodnight and say “I love you.” He’s been so quarrelsome lately that the “I love you” ritual has dried up.

    “Do you say it to him?” she asked.

    People, I sat there gobsmacked. Because, no, I don’t say “I love you,” what I say is “I love you, too” — that’s MY job. And it never crossed my mind to say it to him before I go to bed. Ever.

    And perhaps I might not fully mean it on a daily basis, but I always do on a yearly basis, or a decades-long basis.

    So, a grade of F in Love 101 for me. Wouldn’t it be horrifying to discover that’s all I have to do?

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  • Halloween a week early

    Here I am celebrating Halloween at a street party.

    The costume was subtle.

    Still, I would say 10% of the people I encountered got it and commented on it. One asked what my favorite Weird Al song is. (Party in the CIA, of course. The wordplay, it does not stop.)

    Primarily I spoke with the street actors depicting random characters: Mr. and Mrs. Sweeny Todd, The Wicked Witch of the West, and Lizzie Borden, played by the most angelic, innocent-looking woman I have ever seen.

    No wonder she was acquitted.

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  • TWIL: The most expensive signature

    I started my trivia journey in sixth grade, when some relative let me look through their Guinness Book of World Records.

    I remember the same things everyone else does. Worlds fattest twins (riding on motorcycles). World’s longest fingernails. And the world’s most expensive signature, say it with me …

    Button Gwinnett!

    Button Gwinnett signature

    You know him, you love him, Button Gwinnett, signed the American Constitution and died young, leaving relatively few other signatures behind.

    This week I learned that our boy Button is number two, and the winner should be this signature:

    Morris Ggraham? Ma Grasshopper? No, that’s William Shakespeare.

    You would think that W.S. would always have had the title of most expensive, but evidently none of his signatures have ever been traded. The U.K. government seems to have hoarded all of his signatures. So he isn’t even in the running.

    So even though the winner should be Shakespeare, it isn’t. The current record-holder is Steve Jobs.

    Sold for about half a million dollars decades after I learned of Button Gwinnett. Even though I sense the iPad I’m typing on might not like this, Button still rules on in my heart.

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  • Progress or lack thereof on Gary’s health

    Well, Gary’s been the picture of health on paper. Blood tests all fine, colonoscopy fine, endoscopy fine, CAT scan fine. I mean, there was little stuff, of course. Some bowel and bladder parts were thickened and some had clumps of granulomas, all probably from past infections. Little things that will need to be monitored during his physicals. A hernia or two. Inflammation. Things like that.

    The only things of note came in last night:

    • One test that looked at his pancreatic output was — borderline — too low.
    • One test that looks at his intestinal inflammation was — borderline – too high.
    • One test that looks to rule out celiac disease was — just right. No celiac disease.

    So there we are. Starting to knock things off the list. No colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, celiac disease, or current massive infection. All organ parts look good, and nothing glaring or scary to be concerned about about.

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  • Mom-in-my-head shares her opinions

    Sometime last spring I wanted a bagel. I buttered each half, put them under the broiler, and set the timer for three minutes. I have made enough bagels this way that I don’t even watch any more. I don’t watch, and I didn’t leave the oven door cracked.

    [Mom-in-my-head interjects:] “Always leave the oven door ajar when you’re broiling, Ellen.”

    I relied on the timer, instead, and I came back to a burnt bagel. “Weird,” I said.

    [Mom-I-M-H:] “Oh. Weird? Is it?”

    I sighed and prepped another bagel, turned on the broiler and —

    “Click” said the broiler, and turned off.

    I tried two more times and realized the burnt bagel was the result of a manic broiler element that flamed out in its last throes.

    ”Gary,” I said, “We need to have Sears come out and look at the broiler. It burnt a bagel and then it died on me.”

    Gary: “That’s a sign we need a new range.’

    “No, we don’t –”

    Gary spent two days researching new range technology. And then I was so unenthusiastic about that prospect that he decided to wait for something else to break.

    I tried to use the broiler in the microwave/airfryer/convectiontoaster chimera oven but it just did not bubble the milk solids they way I like them.

    So, half a year, no buttered broiled bagel, and then last week he called Sears and they came out. I described the situation that precipitated the broiler failure.

    He essentially told me you have to leave the door ajar when you broil things. Because — shut up, Mom — BECAUSE otherwise it will overheat. In fact it always overheats, but there’s a shut-off. It clicks, then the element goes from red to black, then it starts up again. And if you leave the door shut sometimes it can’t —

    [M.I.M.H.] “I see, so if a MAN explains it to you …”

    “No, you never explained it to me, Mom, you just said that’s how I should do it.”

    Anyway, I also learned that if you close the door on a steak as it’s broiling you go from broiling a steak to cooking/steaming/broiling a steak, that’s another reason to keep the door open when you are broiling.

    The worst part was —

    [M.I.M.H.] “The fact that you haven’t had a broiled bagel for months even though the broiler was fine as soon as it cooled off?”

    Yes. That was the worst part. But just punishment for defying my mother.

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  • Thursday Paint Progress: 10/22/2026

    This is what it was last week:

    This is what it is now:

    This is what it is supposed to be:

    7B0B89F7-8A41-4222-A219-3FA355399DBC

    I just could not get the blue wash to stick. And I don’t know why every photo I take with this phone warps in one corner. Honestly, just that sky took 45 minutes, and now I have to soften it again.

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