Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Baby Time

I was surprised to look through the wildlife cam photos and find baby raccoons.
Usually the babies don’t show until the first week of June. Based on the date these were two weeks ahead of schedule. They look pretty chunky for babies, too. I think someone’s been holding out.

But it is baby season. Gary complained that he put out half a bag of peanuts and they were all gone the next day. Usually this means that Gary will put out an entire bag the next night, but he said, and I quote, “screw those piggy little babies.”

There had been some drama deep in the night when another mama had to defend a baby that had just done something indefensible.

In contrast to the chubby baby raccoons, at dusk I have been seeing the tiniest baby squirrels ever. I read that you rarely see small squirrels, because they don’t leave the nest until they have fur. I take that to mean they have to hit puberty. Well, this year we have four tiny peach-fuzz squirrels out here. Size of baby kittens, if you don’t count the tail.

Raccoon babies too big, squirrel babies too small. That should go in the Farmer’s Almanac as signs of a global pandemic.

Space Launch

I was trying to get some context around Wednesday’s manned rocket launch. Who is flying? Who made the spacecraft? Where are they going?

(Some of those questions took me down a rabbit trail to the NASA astronaut page, where I read that evidently an astronaut is retiring. This is a strange concept. How can an astronaut retire? I suppose you could stop giving interviews? Your Wikipedia page is still going to say Astronaut.)

It’s confusing that we now have astronauts flying on private Tesla-built spacecraft. They’ll arrive at the launch pad in a Tesla: that’s just worrisome. It’s also worrisome that the NASA spaceflight head just stepped down days ago, but they assure us that it was because of a bad decision that doesn’t affect the mission.

Finally, I tracked down the name of one of the astronauts — seriously, imagine a 60’s child having to “track down” John or Virgil or Buzz or Wally — and it turns out he was born in St. Ann, the same suburb of St. Louis where my grandma lived. He went to Pattonville High School. (He was there a few years too late for me to play Six Degrees of High School Separation, every St. Louisian’s favorite game.)

Godspeed, Robert Behnken, astronaut now and forever.

Halloween Costumes

Halloween this year is going to be ALL about the topical costumes.

• Get a Qtip, cut off one end, and adhere the cut end with spirit gum just inside your nose. You don’t need to tickle your brain to look like you are getting a swab test.

 

• Put flour on your hair and skin, wear white clothes, a red MAGA hat, and be someone who injected bleach because the President suggested that might be a good idea. Or, paint on a fake tan and go as the person who tried to use sunlight to kill the virus. That could be a couples’ costume.

 

• Here’s another couples‘ costume: one person dons a white kitchen trash bag, the other wears pink and fashions a spiky coronavirus out of some old knitted Pussy hats from 2016, and the white blood cell in the trash bag can attack and absorb the pink coronavirus intermittently through the evening.

 

• Take a black t-shirt and some white fabric paint, and paint a pulmonary covid x-ray on the shirt:
  
  
  
• An obvious one for the blond ladies: all you need is a scarf.

• This coverall is just ten bucks at Amazon.

• For those of you with small children, it seems like there could be a child’s hand sanitizer costume cobbled out of one of those big water cooler bottles, but you would have to jam the child’s torso into the water bottle and then fill it partly with gelatin up to waist level. 

This all assumes there will be a Halloween this year.

Well, Crap.

So, in January I was all set with Barenaked Ladies and Beach Boys tickets. Then there was the Covid, and I was not looking forward to being packed into a concert venue.

Yesterday came the news that Barenaked Ladies are just shifting their 2020 tour to 2021, and tickets will still be valid. Great! Great for everyone, except the people in the four cities where they couldn’t reschedule, like ... Saint Louis.

Poor Saint Louis Music Park - St. Louis built it, and for their first year they get a global pandemic, so no concerts. Still, they promise to send a refund sometime in the next month.

Beach Boys need to cancel next. Then I need to just hunker down here in my room until the virus mutates like in The Andromeda Strain or until the llamas save us all.

Weekly Paint Progress; 5/21

This week the cenote went from this...

... to ... 

The shadow is too dark now, and the edge makes no sense, but that’s easy to fix. The tongue that juts out over sinkhole is gone now, because it was making no sense to me, other than it made the shadow. I’m not fixing it anything but the edge of the hole, and I daub some colors on the top right and call it.

I need to select my next practice from the book. I think I’m going to try for the purple flowers in the copper pot - only there’s a ridiculous amount of copper detail, and no explanation of how it’s done. It starts out loose:

... and then gets really delightfully detailed. Look at that bowl!

Should be fun.

Butt Stuff

Gary and I are pretty grabby with each other, which is strange because I’m not physical with anyone else. I’m not a big hugger. 

I didn’t realize how much time we spent nose-booping or hair-ruffling until the covid kept us away from each other. 

We have now established a new tradition to take the place of our nightly goodnight kiss: the nightly goodnight baboon butt rub. We stand on opposite sides of the hallway in the doorways of our respective rooms. Then we face away from each other, back into the hallway until our butts meet, then spend some time rubbing our butts against each other. 

Every night the butt rub takes a different tone. Some nights it’s a big rumbly rub fest, some nights it’s a perfunctory bump. Last night there was a repetitive thrusting quality that reminded me of early sex, when you both have your own rhythm going, and one person’s on the out-step when the other’s expecting the in-step.

I think I might miss the butt-bumping when life goes back to normal.

Another Step Away from My Gilenya

Well, I am now definitely saying goodbye to my Gilenya and hello to Mayzent, which is supposedly the safer version of the same drug. It lets ones immune system bounce back if needed, and in these Dark Times one needs a good immune system.

I looked at the patient-targeted literature for this new drug, and if I recall it said something like, “this is good if you have relapsing-remitting MS” (me me!) “or if you have had a reduction in lesions” (also me ... uh-oh ... ) ‘or if you have secondary progressive MS.” (not me, I guess ... yet?) It was just a disturbing confirmation that I seem to be trudging on to the More Serious MS even though I thought the progression was stopped in its tracks. I stopped any new lesions, but evidently at my age there’s a turn, the lesions disappear, and take a little bit of brain with them. Still, you can’t deny I have fewer lesions than I might have had, so less worry about vital brain parts vanishing.

Also, the best predictor of the future is the past, and I have had a comically easy course of relapsing MS. I anticipate an equally easy coast down this new road.

Barf. Anyway, enough heroism. I just can’t stand all this positivity. Let’s get on with the bitching.

To continue my crawl toward this new drug, I needed to check off a vaccination checkbox, so today I got my first dose of the Shingrix shingles vaccine.

First off, I had to find a place to get it. Doctors’ office? No, just telemedicine. Walgreens? No, CDC says it’s not essential. I ended up getting it at Target, where there was a little CVS counter. Target. I felt like I was in a dream. “And then suddenly I was getting a vaccination but it was at Target and the pharmacist was a sheep in black underwear.”

”Oh, you should know,” the pharmacist said, after he gave me the shot, “your arm will hurt.” That was four hours ago, and I just raised my arm to scratch my head and almost fell down. I laughed uncontrollably, that’s how much it hurt, and the last time I laughed at pain was when the physical therapist tore apart my frozen shoulder. 

This how much it hurts: the side effects section For the vaccine reassures you that Shingles hurt more. “Not as bad as SHINGLES” it chirps.

“How long does this last?” I wondered. I googled. DAYS. Two DAYS. I may be distracted by the chills and fever and vomiting, though. (I swear, I just typed ‘fever’ and I started feeling hot.) I will get the same side effects after — get this — shot number two, which is scheduled for July. 

Of course, I am being a baby. It only hurts if I try to use my arm, for anything like, say, touching my face, which I don’t do, or painting, which I should do. I put off last Saturday’s painting because of the basement puddle, so next Thursday’s paint update will be thin.

I know, risk vs reward, permanent disability vs two days of arm pain, but damn. 

Stone Rabbit

While the streets might be dotted with dead deer, the lawns are littered with live rabbits.

A few days ago I stepped out the front door and saw a chunky brown rabbit right outside. I expected it to dart off at my next step, but it just stared dully at me with leaden eyes while I walked within two feet of it. I collected the mail and the paper, and stopped by the rabbit on the way back in.

”Go away, dude.”

He stared. Not a panicked stare. A bored get-off-my-lawn-lady stare.

I opened the door and realized why he hadn’t escaped: I’d blocked his warren access with a large rock in an effort to dry the leaky basement. 

”Just go around the side. Plenty of ways into your warren.” 

He didn’t budge. I went inside and deposited the mail and the paper. I got some coffee. I looked outside again. Still there. I opened the front door to say, “Act like a rabbit, dude,” and he bounded away.

The next day he was in the middle of the back yard, immobile. Gary speculated that He was a She, and she was sitting on a nest. 

The day after that I went to look at the peonies in the side yard. First, I noticed the mulch in the peony bed on my left blocked the warren entrance. And, there on my right, sat the fearless phlegmatic rabbit. I figured I’d see how close I could get, maybe into foot-nudging territory. When I was one step away the rabbit bolted, five bonus rabbits exploded out of the peony bed, and all six vanished into the neighbor’s yard.  

I exclaimed either “Jesus Christ!” or “Fuck!” — I hope it was “Jesus Christ” because I immediately heard my neighbor tell his four year old daughter to “look at all the bunnies, sweetie!” Sweetie and Dad were looking out of their open back door. 

We had a nice talk about how he’s never seen so many rabbits, and he suspects there might be a rabbit nest under his back porch. I didn’t tell him there is a rabbit metropolis extending from his porch to mine, and I had blocked off all the entrances but his. 

Graves

Last Friday I was in a cemetery attending a burial. It isn’t a new cemetery. Not only did I walk through this cemetery on my way home from grade school, Gary did the same eight years earlier, in the ‘60s.

I noticed a new grave a few yards away.

Then I noticed another.

Then I started counting. There were nine fresh graves I could see; who knows how many more if I had turned around. 

Of course, I attributed the fresh graves to the Covid. 

Later, though, I realized that it had rained that morning, at the end of a rainy week. Any exposed dirt will look new when it’s water-logged. I decided what I was looking at were just graves the grass hadn’t covered yet, and the muddy clumps were from the spring rains.

On the afternoon drive home, Gary and I saw a dead deer on the side of the road and said the requisite “Aww.” Still, I thought, odd, because the crews that tidy the roadkill usually get on it in the morning, and that deer looked like it had been dead a while, and “Oh God, is that another dead deer?”

Yes. Within half a mile another slightly smaller yet just as dead deer. 

Again, I attributed the deer carcasses to the Covid. Not that they died of it, just that the crews hadn’t picked them up. I don’t suppose picking up dead deer is considered an essential task, and perhaps the people who usually report the roadkill are sheltering in place.

Or more likely, I want to attribute everything to Covid to give it more importance, because I want my life disrupted by something of significance rather than a nuisance.

Rewriting the Novel: Research

So, you know Jerry’s novel is set in an oil boom town in Oklahoma in 1930. He’s got all the details you would want regarding a 1930 oil derrick, but that’s about all. Even though it’s not a historical novel, I want the other details to be right. 

Initially, all I wanted to know was if they had poker chips in 1930. I started looking a week ago. I don’t know the answer, because then I began reading about the money in 1930, and that was amazing, because 1929 was the year they decided to carve an inch off the money. In 1928 the standard currency was an inch bigger all around. I say standard - there was a lot of non-standard currency issued by regional national banks. Before that, if you were a bank, evidently you could just make up your own currency, and it was very pretty, and before that you could have square bills if you like, like Confederate money, and thirty percent of the currency was counterfeit. I tell you this because I have to tell someone, because that week’s worth of research is going to be boiled down to one descriptive phrase.

For more research I also watched a pretty poor Clark Gable movie named Boom Town — and I was frightened every moment that Jerry might have watched it and I would see an example of subconscious plagiarism unfolding on the screen — but I was relieved to see a) it was about wildcatters and was b) actually pretty inaccurate.

(The money in the movie was entirely wrong for the time period. ASK ME HOW I KNOW.)

Also, they would have us believe that you name an oil well after your girlfriend, as you would a bomber jet, when anyone knows you name it after whoever’s name is first on the land lease. Please. 

[Spoilers, if you can spoil a movie from 1940.] There was one very unrealistic plot hole — Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert meet and spend a pleasant evening at a rodeo. (That was a scary moment - there was a rodeo in Jerry’s book.) The next morning, Claudette’s boyfriend Spencer Tracy shows up and she says, sorry, met and married Clark Gable here yesterday. They weren’t in Vegas, no one was drunk, just somewhere between 12 midnight when they were winding up their date and seven the next morning they fell in love, and, “got married.” I know, 1940’s movie, set in 1918-1940, but for God’s sake. 

Of course, it was actually pretty entertaining to see their interpretation of a boom town and compare it to Jerry’s. The movie has an oil well gusher and it’s a marvelous event — compared to Jerry’s book preaching about how gushers are a scandalous waste of money, they catch fire, burning oil rains down on people, it’s not fun. I suppose it’s some gritty realism. Accuracy over drama.

We’ll have to see what’s next, if I can ever get out of this research rabbit hole.

Goodbye Yell a Big Grow

Am I the only one who has no idea what Elton John is singing? I knew I had a problem understanding the words to Rocketman. It’s not just Rocketman. I recently looked up the lyrics to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

The first verse is fine. It’s intelligible. Then, at the chorus, it goes south.

So, goodbye yellow brick road [okay]
Where the dogs of society howl [let me know if ANYONE knew those were the words - I hear “in the dockside society house”]
You can't plant me in your penthouse [can’t trap me in your henhouse?]
I'm going back to my plough [I did get this by the “henhouse” context]

Back to the howling old owl in the woods [I got “back to the cabin, oh, out in the woods”]
Hunting the horny back toad [“hunting the honey back tow”]

Oh I've finally decided my future lies [“oh, I’m out in the side of my picture life”]

Beyond the yellow brick road

 

What do you think you'll do then? [this I can hear]
I bet that'll shoot down your plane [not “I’ll practice you down the plain?”] 
It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics to get you on your feet again [I have usually stopped listening by this point, but then he ropes me back in with a whole verse I can understand.]

After the comprehensible verse he gets me again with:

 

Sniffing for tidbits like you on the ground [“Steppenwolf tuppence like you,” followed by warbling.]

 

Now that I have looked up the words, they’re really good. There’s a story and progression. All the stuff I love! Why would he ruin his lyrics by singing them that way - and of course I realized, they aren’t his lyrics. They’re Bernie Taupin’s lyrics. I bet Bernie’s pissed about that.

 

What’s really sad is that if I’m not actively looking at the real words, I still hear “in the dockside society house“ — it’s engraved in the neurons. Sad.

 

Weekly Paint Progress: 5/14

This week the cenote went from this...

... to this ...

...and oh, do I hate it now. When the foreground bush dries it is going back to green-black there, and I don’t know what’s going on with that tongue hanging over the hole.

The teacup went from this ...

to this ...

... and I hate this too. Not a good week for painting. But I’m calling this done. This is what I was aiming for. Not quite right, especially on the teacup, but I’ve got so many layers of white and grey on that thing that I’d have to sandblast to get to a paintable surface.

This Post Brought to You by the Letter U

The entertainment I liked this month has all been on Amazon Prime (perhaps elsewhere too?) and all of it started with the letter U.

First - okay, so do you like funny Barenaked Ladies songs about depression? Do you enjoy the My Favorite Murder podcast? Do you like the contrast of dark subjects and light silliness? If so, check out Buzzfeed’s Unsolved: True Crime and Unsolved: Supernatural on Amazon. The True Crime one is essentially the My Favorite Murder podcast, but with giggly men instead. They include one of my favorite things: they write out some of the dialog onscreen, and somehow writing it out makes it funnier.  (You could have a drinking game with the word “snort”.) In the later seasons there is some clever work with the graphics. (Like everything, the first season and first set of hosts is rocky, so don’t go by that. Season 2 is like the second model year of a new car: they’ve worked the kinks out.)

In the true crime vein, I also watched the documentary Unseen, about a serial killer who preyed on marginalized women. Reviews on IMDB were love/hate. I saw the point of the haters, it was dull in parts — peppered with insanity. The convenience store owner -- what he said? Crazy! The visit to the bathroom? Jesus!

Finally, I think I remember seeing trailers for the series Upload at the movie theater. It’s a funny concept: if your death is imminent you can decide to have your consciousness digitally uploaded. It’s cute and mindless. Kind of a socially satirical rom-com.

Next month I guess it’s on to the V’s.

Basement Vacation

So, if the guest room is my new hotel room, the basement is my new vacation spot: the place I go to unwind. I unwind there because the basement has the pink table that holds the painting area.

The saggy Home Depot box lined with black landscaping fabric is where I have staged any still life - like the gourds and the teacups. You put the object in the box so no other light gets to it, and then you can light it directly — in my case, with the light that sits on my husband’s workbench.

That little iPad next to the light plays “relaxing” episodes of the My Favorite Murder podcast while I paint. Usually when I have a project, what I listen to is woven into to the project in my mind. The art glass project in the backyard contains the news about Chandra Levy and then 9/11. Oddly, I can’t tell you what Murder connects to each painting stacked up on the right side of the workbench.

The best part of any hobby or vacation is the organization. Is that not the coolest pivoting paint storage box? Transparents in one side, opaques in the other.

I suppose like all vacation spots, it has to be close to the water, and in my basement corner, there’s the water that frequently bubbles through the basement floor when it rains. You can see the “shoreline” in the middle of the photo.

Painting is as good as meditation for getting the dark thoughts out of your head. I know painter’s studios as supposed to be full of light, but I’m not there yet. You can stick me in the dark corner of my damp basement with murders in the background and I am fine.