Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Weekly Paint Progress: 11/30

This week the mandolin went from this:

... to this.

That vase is too asymmetric.

 

Give Me All the PeniciIlin

Well, Mom-in-my-head, it could be that all your concern about penicillin was for naught. The first test, the blood test, came back negative.

This document from the Centers for Disease Control sort of agrees with the first allergist’s claim that you can be “allergic one day and not the next,” if you rephrase it as “allergic one decade and not the next.” And I’m not done; I still need to do a skin test to see if I might be allergic to the derivatives like Keeflex. 

But mark me safe from old-school penicillin. Of course there’s not much I can do with this information other than go out and get syphilis.

Deception Level

Even though I have the medical exemption and I won't have to come to the office, there will be some occasions when my attendance is required. One of those is in a little over a month.

Have I begun planning my outfit? Of course I have. Makeup? It's complicated.

The last time my coworkers saw me, I wore makeup. Foundation, eyeshadow, lipstick, but no mascara or blush, because mascara and blush combined with the rest exceeds my deception tolerance. On the rare occasions I wore mascara or blush I dialed back either eyeshadow or lipstick. 

Only now I have the ultimate lie perched on top of my head: a wig. This blows the deception algorithm out of the water.

For Zoom calls with the wig I’ve been wearing nothing but a touch of eyebrow pencil on my left eyebrow. Not the right, the right’s fine, and it’s partially covered by the wig anyway, but the left side of my left eyebrow needs some augmentation. 

But in a little over a month, I will be face-to-face with my team without the Zoom filter. They will all see my lashless lizard eyelids in person. 

Right now I think I am comfortable with this level of deception: wig, mascara, tinted moisturizer, lipstick until I eat something then that’s it for the lipstick, and the left eyebrow pencil. And that just goes on the outer half of the left eyebrow. For the full eyebrow I would have to deduct the tinted moisturizer.

How does this work for other people? Do women with breast augmentation stop conditioning their hair? Or is this just me?

Yet Another Special Post from Goldie the Cat

I want to report some cat abuse. I have been very content to eat the brand of moist cat food with which I am most familiar. Now they have switched my food to some high-protein New Zealand brand.

For some reason the Teatless One -- autocorrect just suggested Twatless One, heh-- Teatless gave me some lamb-bone flavored protein. It was vile. You could taste the New Zealand clam shells mixed in. Very strong. Distasteful. 

I could have  told him that I cannot abide lamb.  There are also tins of mackerel and venison.  I suppose I will have to sniff those as well, then paw pointedly on the bin where they store my preferred brand.

Humans are so dim-witted sometimes.

TWIL: Cats Need Mouse Bones

Gary came in all excited. “CATS NEED PROTEIN AND THEY RECOMMEND YOU FEED THEM GROUND-UP MOUSE BONES.”

I wasn't sure who “they” were in this sentence. EXPERTS, he said.

“Why wouldn't we just feed him mice,” I asked. “Get a mouse from PetSmart, like the ones they feed to snakes, then put it in the bathroom with Goldie. He would love that.”

“NO THAT IS DISGUSTING.’”

“Two animals enter the bathroom: only one returns.”

“THEY ALSO SELL CANS OF FOOD WITH THE MOUSE BONES ALREADY GROUND UP.”

This explains why I saw three flavors of this in the Amazon cart yesterday: lamb, venison, and mackerel.

The venison one at least does contain bone.

“No gums,” the can says. 

I assume there’s no mouse flavor because opening a can and seeing a preserved mouse would be  off-putting. 

Review: Mike Birbiglia, The Old Man and the Pool

I was delighted to see a new Mike Birbiglia special on Netflix last night. I love what he does: making fun of his sleep issues in Sleepwalk with Me, his love life in My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, and babies in The New One. Also, I believe he’s married to someone from Saint Louis, and he gets some entirely irrational points for that.

The latest special centers on death and doctors and families who don’t say “I love you.” Right up my alley. 

A Very Special Guest Post from Goldie the Cat

First of all, don’t expect much because writing this post is cutting into my sleep time. I got no sleep yesterday because the One With Teats was making turkey WHICH I DID NOT GET and then No Teats was watching a loud football game.

I got my revenge at two in the morning when I said the only human word I know, “Meow,” in a variety of inflections.  “MEOW, meow meow .. MEOWMEOW.” That woke them both up. Now if I could fill the house with strange cats who want to touch them we would be even.

I need to go. Teats keeps trying to scratch my chin.

Weekly Paint Progress: 11/23

This week the Less Basic Shapes went from this:

... to exactly the same, because I have been painting bathroom walls, not mandolins. Both bathrooms are done. The virgin bathroom is elegant or boring, depending on my mood, and it took two days to get the primer and beige on one and then two days to get the medical bathroom painted and everything re-hung.

And Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Review of New Toy: Vibrator

I looked in the Amazon delivery queue and saw Gary bought me a surprise gift.

FLAPPING G SPOT VIBRATOR FOR WOMEN “LAYLA” ADULT RABBIT SEX TOYS WITH 9 FLAPPING MODES 4 TICKLING MODES WATERPROOF CLITORALIS [sic] STIMULATOR FOR CLIT (sure) NIPPLE ('kay) ANAL (nope) STIMULATION RECHARGEABLE ADULT SEX TOYS

And then I looked at the photo and saw a vibrator designed by a committee.

If this were a horror movie that vibrator would whimper, "Kill me."

This is the silicone version of what would happen if a Bop-It and a Swiss army knife and Barney the dinosaur had a baby and it grew up to be a “CLITORALIS” ANAL STIMULATOR.

This isn’t really a review because, while I cycled through all the tickling and flapping modes, I haven't used it. It scares me. Especially the G-spot flapper. Picture a drum stick playing a relentless paradiddle on your bladder. Not your G-spot, your BLADDER. The only place I could see using this device is in the parking lot of the Urgent Care. I would get an infection even if I were bolstered by the preventative antibiotics.

I mean, it was reviewed well: maybe it is life-changing, but I don't think I can bring myself to even try it. 

Review of New Toy: Tire Inflator

My Mini Cooper is very in touch with its body, especially the tires. If the tires are not at optimal pressure, I get a message, then I have to squat at the free air dispenser, and play with the pressure gauge, and lose the valve caps, and I hate it.

So I got a handy tire inflator I can use at home. It took a few tries at first, but now I can stick the air hose on the valve, get the reading of the current pressure, hit the trigger, and it inflates to the pre-set amount (plus or minus a few psi) and then STOPS.

And I can sit like a lady on my portable gardening bench the whole time. 

And it’s on Black Friday sale, one-third off. Not free, of course, like air, but worth it if you really don’t like rutting around a parking lot for your valve caps.

Allergist

When I was 22, Mom took me to an allergist. I had just gotten engaged to Gary, and I guess she wanted to hand me over to him with all my medical difficulties documented and disclosed, as if she was selling a house. "Don't give her raw egg whites, or the sewer will back up."

The allergist greeted us, and Mom listed the things she suspected I was allergic to (penicillin, sulfa, raw egg whites) and said she wanted him to give me one of those scratch tests to see what else I needed to avoid.

"No point," he said. "I could test her today, and then tomorrow she could be allergic to an entirely different list of substances."

Mom was baffled in the face of an allergist who didn't seem to believe in her interpretation of allergies. She said, "So, she just had sulfa and her face swelled up. You are telling me that tomorrow she might not, so you won't test her?"

He didn't answer. Instead he asked, "Why did she get sulfa?"

"Because she had a bladder infection."

And then the doctor asked my mother to let him speak with me privately, and then he asked me if I was having sex and explained to me that was how I got the bladder infection. I just nodded, as if I hadn't already looked bladder infection up in our family medical encyclopedia.

I met up with Mom by the elevator, where she was fuming. She grumbled, "What was the big secret?"

"He wanted to tell me sex can cause bladder infections."

"Ridiculous waste of time," she said.

Now, forty-one years later, I am spending the morning in an allergist's office, essentially asking the same question Mom did all those years ago. It’s totally possible the doctor will just tell me that I could be allergic to penicillin one day and not the next. I’m looking forward to hearing that.

TWIL: Charmin Ruffle Mystery Revealed

An utterly charming article on Slate about my favorite topic: The Scalloped Charmin Toilet Paper. There’s a reason for the scallops.

How I Got to the Bottom of a Vexing Toilet Paper Mystery

Gypsum

Some of the work done in the house involved removing drywall, and Gary is convinced that gypsum particles are still floating in the air weeks later. He can't sleep in the main bedroom because a ceiling was removed in the main bathroom and he can still feel the particles on his skin. 

He harrumphs and hacks all right long. I have begged him, pleaded with him to sleep in a hotel. No. He just mutters about how I’m trying to kill him. Evidently, this is the price I must pay on top of the bill I must pay.

I am an experienced spouse, so I know to say, “That sounds awful,” but after saying that I begin listing the obvious solutions, like, “If you truly are allergic to gypsum then why not take some Benadryl or Claritin?” (No.) “How about running the humidifier?” (No.) “Please, please go to a hotel.” (No.)

On the plus side, he has been washing his bedclothes. I might suggest to him that the piles of t-shirts on his closet floor are gypsum dust magnets and he might want to tidy them up. 

Reddit Point of View

I don’t remember what Google search and Reddit path took me there, but I spent an hour reading a Reddit thread on whether or not men talk about sex when they talk with each other. And, huh, they do NOT. And on the rare occasions one of the pack does, the others say “ew, gross,” and swat at him.

You would think I could confirm this with my husband, but I know he doesn’t talk about our sex life with his friends because like many men I know he has no friends. 

Some people surmised that men tend to tease each other about perceived weaknesses, so they don’t like to expose vulnerabilities. Or, perhaps if a man spoke about great marital sex then he might worry that his friends would try to pursue his wife. 

Ultimately, though, they feel it is too personal, especially when it is about a significant relationship. I can’t relate to this at all. Too personal? Well, I suppose even though I would spill all my business I would hesitate to divulge personal information about my partner.

I know. They think about it but they don’t talk about it. As a recently recovering 20-year-old guy, this surprises me. And it doesn't seem healthy. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 11/16

Back to basic shapes; this time only a little less basic.