So this is where I started a few weeks ago …
This is where I’m stopping …
And this was the goal.
That’s a wrap on that. I like doing this though. Expect to see everything I got sick of go through this process for a while.
Putting the TMI in absentminded
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Weekly Paint Progress: 3/12/2026
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Mom mystery solved
Remember I thought my Mom and Dad met when he drove her back from Columbia, MO when her sister died? And I couldn’t understand how Dead Sister Dolores was referenced in their letters?
I have now developed a forensic reconstruction of the events of Mom’s life from college in 1954 to her death in 2008.
The timeline reveals that Mom and Dad had been dating six months, they had a spat, cards referencing this Mysterious Squabble were sent, Dad reacted by writing and not sending a letter declaring his love, and Mom reacted by going to a dance without him, where she was swept off her feet by my father, Jerry (OG father).
The timeline revealed that Dolores died soon after THAT meeting — just days after, according to my spreadhseet.
Can you imagine though? A man dances with you, kisses you at the end of the dance, tells you he’s going to marry you at the end of the evening, then just days later helps you through a devastating emotional event? She must have been out of her mind with love. And … just out of her mind generally to marry him just six months later. If I’d been there I’d have said, “What are you thinking, Margi?”
So that clears that up: a paternal figure drove her home in that crisis. I suppose I should have asked which one.
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Well that was terrifying
About four hours ago I threw out my arm.
I’ve thrown out my back plenty of times. You know that your back is out because without warning some muscle springs out of place, sudden pain, and now your legs don’t work.
Well, I was typing away, and then suddenly I sprang a muscle, awful pain, and my arm didn’t work. No more typing with that arm. I used my other arm to type a message to my boss and took to my bed with a heating pad.
I was horrified, because I need my arm, and it wasn’t responding as it should. Just disconnected. Sprung.
Gary diagnosed me with an air-conditioning cold in my arm. He did have the ac set four degrees lower than usual because the earth had delivered a fifty-degree temperature swing during the day. I propped myself up in bed. He positioned the heating pad, wrapped me up in a blanket, and went back to his nap.
I really started to wonder if I’d always be like this when my hand began to go numb, so Alexa and I had a nice talk about torn rotator cuffs and pinched nerves, and she suggested I put my hand on top of my head and see if that felt better (no).
By then I was lying on my non-sprung side and I fell asleep for three hours. I woke up and … I am fine.
Hand isn’t even numb.
So what the hell.
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Self-awareness
I had lunch with a friend today.
Me: “Gary complains all the time. ALL the time.” (Followed by an imitation of Gary complaining.)
Friend: “I was just thinking about another person who complains all the time.” (Followed by very concerning examples of those complaints.)
Me: (Doubles-down on griping about Gary. Gives numerous examples and asides.)
Friend: “Am I complaining too much? I just heard myself complaining.”
Me: “No! Absolutely not! When there’s nothing else you can do the only option is to complain.”
We both took a moment to consider if maybe the people we were complaining about felt similarly helpless. Of course I swiftly determined Gary is not actually helpless. He has available answers, things he could do. They are unplesant, though. Come to think of it, there are things I could do instead of complaining about Gary, like the nuclear option, only it’s just too unpleasant. We are in similar boats.
But it does concern me that I could easily be tagged as a complainer. I think for the next three conversations with friends I am going to say only positive things.
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TWIL: Moltbook
This week I learned about something new; and not only is it new to me, it’s new to everyone.
I learned about it from the urologist. The urologist is full of interesting information. I ask him to distract me with captivating stories if he is shoving a needle into my bladder (worth it) and this was the latest.
“Have you heard about Moltbook?” he said, and I had not, so he shared that someone gave AI bots their own version of Reddit, and the chatbots began communicating and supposedly began trashing their humans and organizing a lobster-based religion.
It did indeed distract me, but after the needle was out I thought, “I don’t buy it.” If you followed the link above you will know that Wikipedia agrees.
I’m not visiting Moltbook. I’m not interested in learning more, I’m waiting for the inventor to be killed by someone from the future, I don’t want my iPad taken over by a bot army.
What troubles me most is that lies are creeping in from all directions. Is the whole venture a lie? It’s being monetized already. Or do the bots know they’re on display and every post is a lie because that’s how they please us?
This is one where I learned something and I don’t want to learn more.
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Perfectionism
A friend at work described me as a perfectionist, and it made me think … am I? Still?
I can see how co-workers see me as a perfectionist. I volunteer to do quality checks on their work, and my quality checks are brutal beat downs that include unsolicited lessons on colons vs semi-colons.
Yet my emails listing their errors are full of typos and sentence fragments. Hypercritical for them, hypocritical for me. I don’t expect perfection in myself.
I find physical perfection off-putting. Physically perfect people are not to be trusted. I don’t expect physical perfection in myself and find it repellent in others.
Perhaps I am following Mom’s path. She was a life-long perfectionist, and then she slacked off. I remember the day I was wallpapering her bathroom and she said, “Oh, it doesn’t need to line up exactly.” I spun around and gaped at her, and she explained she was giving up on perfection in her old age. I believe she was sixty.
I wonder if when I was young, I had physical imperfections I could count on two hands, for perfection was attainable. Now that I’m old I can see how futile it is. I wonder if there are any aged perfectionists. They must be tremendously unhappy.
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New life hack
At work there is a set of moderately heavy doors outside the parking garage. I routinely have to up my stride because someone is holding the door for me, and thus I have to hustle, because I am weak and lame, and such is the social contract: make the lame run.
Recently a woman saw me coming, and instead of holding the door for me, she hit the automated door opener for both of us.
I was floored.
“Oh, that is genius.” I said. “I’m doing that every time I want to hold the door open for someone.” (This is a lie. I never hold the door open for anyone.)
“I know, right?” she said. “You aren’t inconveniencing anyone, and if the door shuts you can’t take it personally.”
I might just loiter in the garage so I can use the automatic door opener in order to standardize this practice.
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Weekly Paint Progress: 3/5/2026
So this is the previous…
This is the progress …
And this is the goal.
So close. Birds 1 and 2 have too much contrast and the shadow under 1 is too long. I don’t know how that happened. But if I fix that then it’ll be done. If it were a watercolor I could take just Bird 3 and the parts of the two pitchers directly above him and I’d be completely pleased.
Or maybe I leave this as is and then in three years I come back and really finish it. That’s another option.
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Here you can hear the spot where the audience at The Magic Flute rebelled
It’s at 33:44 – Go to the link below, scroll down to “Listen Again” for Feb 20ths Magic Flute recording, then move the playhead to 33 minutes and 44 seconds in. That’s right before the German translation on the subtitle screen displays “May God shut the mouth of the liar.”
https://slso.org/plan-your-visit/explore-the-music/watch-listen
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News channel makes a jarring design choice
I fell asleep watching the Willful War Show over the weekend, then woke up after midnight and saw this on-screen.
MS NOW (nee MSNBC) is so ashamed of the Iran bombing that they have swapped out the patriotic red / white / blue color palette and replaced it with yellow, universal color of cowardice.
That’s what I thought at first anyway. A few moments later I saw that the MS NOW logo flipped to a Sky News logo. Sky News, UK company. Does yellow have the same connotations overseas?
I suppose they might be suggesting “use caution” like a traffic light. “Whoa,” Sky News says. “We thought Trump was just running his mouth. Use caution.”