Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Bring the Profanity (Warning: Explicit language)

There has been much in the news of late about how Americans are living in an "Age of Profanity." Is this a bad thing, I ask? If you don't hear profanity on a regular basis and understand it, you would be...my in-laws.

For example, Wilma and I were talking about showers vs baths. She said she prefers baths because, she chirped, "it makes it easier to wash your twat."

(This was reminiscent of Karen warning Arzaana-fay that if  she wore that miniskirt she needed to be careful not to give everyone a "beaver shot." Mr. Wonderful and I projectile-snorted our dinner out our noses. "Wha!" she cried outraged. "That's what it's CALLED." )

"Um, Wilma" I said, "You know you can't say that."

"Why not?" she asked, genuinely puzzled.

"Um, well, because it's Not Nice." Surreal, I thought, I'm lecturing my pure and innocent mother-in-law.

Clearly I was wrong, because "Ken calls it my twat."

Yeah, well, Ken was in the Navy. Then we got in to a debate about what it should be called ("Vagina!" she gasped "I couldn't say that. I  like twat.") and I failed to convince her.

The Amazing Talking Face

What struck me as I had my six-month checkup with the neurologist is how well we communicate.  In particular, we have a fine non-verbal communication.

I am always called on the carpet for my pointed non-verbals. In my first job my boss pulled me aside to suggest I stop being so rude to Maria. "But I've never said anything to Maria!" I protested. The boss suggested I might want to tell my face to shut up, since my face was betraying how I really felt about Maria. (Yeah, couldn't stand her.)

If my face doesn't get me in trouble, then it's "The Tone." Often when I ask, "what exactly did I say to offend you?" the response is "...nothing...but you had this Tone."

That's why it's nice that if I'm evidently screaming non-verbal cues at maximum body-language volume that I have a doctor who gets it.  We had a nice chat; I shared my new music interest ("Gotta have a hobby" he said); I shared my lack of cognitive dysfunction in the face of my Chemistry workload; and I rose to the challenge of the  "Grab my finger" neuro test by suddenly snatching his fingers out of the air as if they were flies. This tickled him.

I thought it all went well until it was over and I was sitting at the desk waiting at to make my next appointment. He appeared behind me,with "one more question - has your mind been racing at night lately?"

Now, if you didn't catch the non-verbals, you would think I said "no" and that was pretty much it. But as it actually happened:

He asked: "One more question - has your mind been racing ... "
My eyes narrowed as my head  pivoted upward to look up at him with an expression of "Oh, so THAT'S what you're thinking now? I'm manic? Are we back to that bullshit again?" He started to laugh, backed off a few steps, and patted my shoulder as if to say "don't hurt me."
" ...  at night lately?"

"No" I said, in the Tone, distinctly and pointedly.   And archly, oh so SO archly.

"Well okay" he laughed, "I just had to see if I needed to reduce your anti-depressants."

"I knew the guitar-playing confession would get me in trouble," I said dryly.

Can't a girl be happy without being too happy? Sheesh.

Is This Going to Win Me an MRI?

Tomorrow when I have my 6-month checkup with the neurologist, he will ask if I have had any MS symptoms. I will have to tell him Marcia has been counting every time I choke at work (and thank you, Marcia).

(I need a 'sincere' emoticon so people know when I'm not being sarcastic.)

Oh, and I have to tell him about my new personality trait. That I am of late a music-lover.  Forty CDs in the last 6 months. Is this excessive? That I have joined a fan club. Granted, it's the BNL fan club, and how could you not join a fan club of a band that uses lyrics like "tableau" and "pedagogue?" Still, I don't think this is normal.

Oh - and that I'm going on a cruise with said rock band. Well, next January. And I'm psyched about it.

Oh - and that I've almost filled up my Nano in 3 months. AND not to forget: I've taken up the guitar after a lifetime of complete music disinterest.

All those things he'll probably write off as "patient presented with mid-life crisis" and will focus, as usual, on my handwriting, gait, and mental competence. (This is probably the first time I won't shrug stupidly when asked if I've been "cognitively impaired." I always want to drool a little when I answer that question. But THIS time when he asks about mental competence I intend to casually mention I went in to this work-related Chemistry project at a grade-school level and sucked up Chemistry in a month.  Bwahahahah.) We shall see.

In Memoriam

We had to put Douglas to sleep. It turned out he didn't have Addison's, his very first X-Ray showed body parts in entirely the wrong locations. He wasn't in pain, but it was just a matter of time. The vet gave us the option of keeping him there over the weekend, doing exploratory surgery, and if it was inoperable just not bringing him out of it. We decided not to have the dog spend a weekend in the vet's office on an IV and then die in surgery, since it seemed really clear something was pushing his organs into the wrong spots. We made a mistake with our first dog Fred and kept him alive way too long while we kept hope alive.

So, it is sad. But it reminds me of a story: Dog Death With Dignity

Dog Death with Dignity

One December morning I was making Christmas cookies with my friend Carol. The house was full of Christmas Crap decor - all the stuff that waits 11 months in the basement to come upstairs and clutter up your house during the holidays, and you have to move out your regular crap to make room for the Christmas crap? That stuff. Anyway, it was morning and Gary was sleeping and the dogs (I thought) were tooling around underfoot.

Suddenly Gary screamed from the bedroom: "Auuugghghgh! Augghgh! Damn it Ellen, the dogs have a bag of chocolate chips and they're eating it!"

Well, you with dogs know this is a crisis. Carol and I dropped our spatulas and ran into the bedroom to find McDonnell and Douglas in the closet chewing, this was true, on a noisy cellophane bag.  A bag that contained Fred. Technically, the cremated remains (cremains) of our late dog Fred. What sounded to Gary like dogs chewing through to chocolate chips was actually dogs chewing through to the well-done remains of their predecessor.

The dogs looked up guiltily for a moment. Then over the screams they turned back to their task. We grabbed the dogs and pulled them away from the store of non-Christmas crap that had been stored on the closet floor and surveyed the damage. The box that had previously contained the cremains had been torn open, the cremains bag pulled out and gnawed on, but luckily Fred had been double-bagged and I did not have to clean cremains into my Dustbuster.

This Week in Happy TV

Two things on TV made me happy this week. Helen Thomas chewed some Presidential ass at the press conference. I want to hug Helen Thomas almost as much as I want to hug the creators of South Park for taking on the "fruity little club."

Passport of Dorian Gray

This is what happens after 12 years of hard living.

It's not that I'm vain, but note the regal bearing in the passport photo on the left. Note the washerwoman aspect in the eye of the passport photo on the right. It is horrifying. Even more horrifying? What about the next passport photo?

 

Mad Dogs and German Men

Doug, the Sickly White Dog, has been increasingly sickly.   He was feeling pretty peaked when he went for some dental work . Gwen the assistant even commented he was not looking in top form and had lost weight. I commented this might be because he is Bulimia Dog and has puked every day for a week.

The dental work led to some antibiotics. Two days on the antibiotics and I had a different dog. Formerly, Doug would wake me up at 6:30 by whining his Little Whiny Song. Now he was waking me up at 6:30 by barking: "BITCH! Get UP!"

And he was kicking Mac's tail all over the house and snarfing down food. Antibiotics stopped, two days later, Sickly Doug was back. Started antibiotics again, puke dried up, Feisty Doug returned.

This led to some more lab work. It looks like he might have Addison's disease and might need some special medication. I mentioned this to mom, who said:

"He'll become horny."
"Huh?"
"Kennedy," she said. "JFK had Addison's. I think they said the medicine is what made him horny."
I sighed, " Some woman at work said her dog died from Addison's."
"You never know what might happen," Mom reassured me. "Doug might be driving past a grassy knoll and be shot by a lone gunman."

He hasn't been definitively diagnosed with a special Presidential Illness, but currently Doug's on dose three of the antibiotics, and a new dose of anti-spasmodic for his belly, and has figured out all of our pill-giving tricks. Pill hidden in peanut butter/ cheese / Vienna Sausages? Doug's not buying it. Pill poked down back of throat? Doug horks it up, gums it, and I find little white pills adhered to his lip-fur days later. Pills ground up with a mortar and pestle and sprinkled on the moist dog food? For a week Doug took minuscule nibbles of his food and spat out the bits contaminated with pill powder.

Now for the past two days he has stopped eating his dog food. I serve it, he looks up and sends me the psychic message: "Don't think I'm falling for some type of invisible pill you have in there."And of course, my puppy-whipped husband has decided we should feed the dog anything that will give him calories. So today Doug - and of course, Mac - have had:

1) A breakfast of  Vienna sausages.
2) For luncheon, shaved mesquite-smoked turkey.
3) A mid-afternoon snack of peanut butter licked off Gary's fingertips.
4) Smoked turkey flecks mixed into dog food. Doug used great tongue contortions to worry out the turkey and leave the dog food.

Finally I convinced Gary we could grind up the pills, mix it with something palatable and water, pull it into a syringe like the vet suggested, and fire it into the back of Doug's throat. I am sure Doug will soon adapt and begin projectile vomiting the medicine right back in my face.

It's That Time Of Year

This is what causes winter depression:

Three Funerals and No Wedding

My uncle Jack died and I went to the visitation today. Jack was my Dad's brother, and therefore my step-uncle. It's a little complicated: I consider Dan (my stepfather) to be my Dad, my step-grandmother my grandma, but Jack is my step-uncle. Since Dad died seventeen years ago, we haven't heard much from that side of the family, which isn't all that surprising, I suppose.

I went fully expecting two things: 1. I expected the corpse to be photographed.  2. I  expected no one would recognize me.

First, about corpse photography. Dad's aunt had a book of daguerreotypes and old photos and quite a few of them were of the dead. (I suppose they wouldn't move much and it made them good daguerreotype subjects. Plus, the photo wouldn't steal their souls.) This was fascinating to me.

I know some families feel even today that the dearly departed is an apt subject for photos. I find this repellent. You know what else is repellent? Touching the corpse. This brings me to:

Grandma's Funeral
Mom's mom died and was outlived by her husband Ray, my STEP-(oh SO step)-Grandfather. He did a scandalous thing at her funeral. Well, he brought his girlfriend, but this in my eyes was even more scandalous: he touched the dead body. He was discussing her arthritis and hauled her hand out of the coffin as a visual aid. Aunt Carleen hustled up to him and said, haughtily and distinctly, "Have you LOST your mind?" I don't know what happened next, Gary dragged me over to some flowers and distracted me.

Gary's family has a long history of touching the corpse. This is why I donated my body to science.

Step-uncle Jack was not photographed or touched during the time I was there (approx 12 minutes). I didn't stay long, but I went because he was related to my Dad, and because Mom would expect a report. I have attended visitations as Mom's proxy before.  For example, I went to:

Mom's Friend Carolyn's Father's Funeral
Nothing much happened at that funeral per se - I went to give Carolyn a hug from my mom. I did not view the corpse, since I had not only never met him, I had never heard stories about him. So the corpse of honor was of no interest to me. I did not view the corpse, I just gave Carolyn my mom's respects.
A few weeks later, Mom asked Carolyn, "So how's your Dad feeling?"
"Dead." (I was not there but I can guess there was an awkward pause.) "... Your daughter was at the funeral."
Mom stepped up to the challenge. "She did not report seeing a coffin. How am I to know he's really dead?"

So I called Mom from the parking lot to remind her not to make any faux pas if she encountered her in-laws. I was expecting to go unrecognized by this family because as I said, it had been seventeen years, and sixty pounds, but as soon as I walked in Brad saw me and introduced me to someone as his cousin Ellen.  It reminded me of:

My STEP-Grandfather Ray's funeral
On the way to Southern Missouri to attend Ray's funeral, Mom alerted me that I would meet some distant relatives I might not recognize. (Not that "those people" would care if I didn't know them. ) Ray had a family from his first wife and there were quite a few of them. I had heard stories of embezzling and babies born in tubs, but I hadn't known what connection "those people" had with Grandpa Ray. It seems I hadn't seen them at Grandpa and Grandma's EVER because "those people" weren't all that welcome at my Grandma's house. This is why I was floored when they saw mom and said:
"Margie! Come over here! This is our sister Margie! And who is this? Hey, kids, that's your Cousin Ellen!"

That is why is was kind of nice that my cousin Brad did recognize me and introduced me as his cousin Ellen. This immediately elevated him from step-cousin to cousin status. In fact, cousin Jayne and cousin Sandy recognized me too. That's why I went over to the body and and looked (but did not touch).

"Why, Ellen" my step-uncle Jack's corpse said, "How ya doin'?" Then he reached out of the coffin and slapped my back. Well, no, I made that up. But he looked like he could have. He was barely dead. It was creepy. I have never seen such an alive-looking corpse. He looked just like Jack did while alive. Draw your own conclusions.

Mac, the Barom-o-Dog

Killer tornadoes passed -- sorry, ripped -- through Missouri two nights ago. I knew this because my dog McDonnell was shaking and panting and sitting on my head at 2 a.m. I tried everything. The Full Body Dog Take-down. The Comforter Tent. The Tough Love Choke-hold. 

Mac the Mighty Weather Dog-ometer needed to alert me that dogs were being rained on somewhere within a two-hundred-mile radius. There was no rain outside my house, of course, but North Central Missouri evidently had tornadoes. Mac wanted me to know that little rural dogs were in danger of being swept up. (He has never seen The Wizard of Oz, thankfully.)

So, knowing the dog was reaching Emergency Alert System levels of panic (even though there was no rain here) I turned on the Weather Channel at 2 a.m. and I swear he watched it. He stopped shaking and studied the red tornado watch boxes closely. A commercial came on and he went back to pacing.

"I know, honey" I cooed, "There's a tornado two hundred freaking miles away. Do you think I can do something about it?"

"PANT PANT PANT!"

At least he contained his bowels, which is more than I can say of our late dog Fred, the Seismo-Dog, who could tell if an earthquake was happening.  I discovered he had this skill when one day I called the vet, complaining Fred was fine yesterday but this morning he had strafed the house with watery diarrhea.

"It's just the earthquake" the vet said, quite blase , "All the dogs are doing it."

"Huh? What earthquake?"

"There was a 2.5 earthquake at the New Madrid fault this morning. We can't feel it, but dogs can, and they panic and have diarrhea."

Since this is the vet who sometimes eschews the Scientific Method (see Dogs and Kangaroo), I thought it best to check with another source. My co-worker Barry's wife worked for Dog Fancy Magazine, so I asked him, "Barry, have you heard anything about the way dogs behave during earthquakes?"

"Yes" Barry said authoritatively, "They slide into the chasms right along with the buildings and the trees."

Still, Fred did seem to be a Discerner of Earthquakes, and McDonnell can certainly sense a tornado at 200 miles. Douglas it appears has no natural talent, unless someday he starts barking and chasing his tail and we are promptly flattened by a tsunami.

Hail Hail No I Will Not Use the Bathroom at Blueberry Hill

My red-headed friend Catherine and I are visiting the Duck Room at Blueberry Hill Thursday to see KT Tunstall perform. I look forward to expanding my KT Tunstall knowledge beyond the one song VH1 has determined I "Oughta Know." I know already, I've seen her giant red lips singing the "woo-hoo" song at least once every two hours.

Don't know what I'm talking about? (Mom)
Too cool to watch VH1? (Libby) Has better things to do with her time (Libby)
Click here http://www.kttunstall.com/ and click Album at the bottom, then the Black Horse and Cherry Tree video. Do it about 200 times. You'll have caught up.

Even with the overkill, I like the song. I find myself  in my freezer singing "Meeaatt-LOAF, Meeaaattt-LOAF -LOAF-LOAF, I want meeaat-loaf, meatloaf is what I need" (stomp).

The only problem is that the performance  is at Blueberry Hill, where no woman of a certain age in Saint Louis will use the bathroom. This is because Chuck Berry is tight with the owner (Chuck performs there once a month) and Saint Louis Women of a Certain Age remember the time Chuck Berry placed video cameras in the women's toilets at the restaurant he owned outside of town. The maddening thing is no one else seems to know this about Chuck, except you can go here and check out the second bullet point of 'Chuck Berry in One Minute.'

It was no little known fact here. What is too dainty about the bullet, "Was arrested for having cameras in the female toilets of his Southern Air restaurant" is that the cameras...were IN...the toilets.   What, you thought he filmed women washing their hands -- (Damn, I swear to you, that KT Tunstall thing is on VH1 again, at this very moment) -- no, he FILMED women's evacuations. 200 women had to present the clothing they wore the day they visited the Southern Air to see if it matched the clothing on the periphery of the shot. Ugggh. Pervert.  Plea bargained his way out of it.

I drive past the shuttered up Southern Air about once a year. I wish someone would buy it, disinfect it, and bring back the biscuits and gravy, because no one fears it anymore. We fear the Blueberry Hill where Chuck is revered. We fear that was the deal with the owner - "Yeah, I'll play for you one Wednesday a month, just keep that potty porn coming."

(Allegedly.)

How cool will this be?

Springsteen Covers Pete Seeger

I have been to three concerts (not a typo, three) concerts in my life:
-BNL and Alanis Morrissette a year and a half ago
-Little River Band at the Arena in 1980
-Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie at the Mississippi River Festival a long, long time ago

(Oh, wait, I heard my Rocker Friend Kevin and his band play. So that makes four. But I don't know if that qualifies as a concert.)

My maiden Aunt Carleen bought the tickets before the Pete Seeger concert, not on the day of, so she was in line surrounded by Deadheads, who were attending a Grateful Dead concert there that day. They stared at my butterball of an aunt in her business suit and low heels and asked her, "Do you follow the Dead?"  I don't know what she responded, but I can assure you she responded in a haughty way. I wish she had been able to say "No, I follow Pete Seeger because he speaks for the underdog, the downtrodden, the unions, the minorities," but she couldn't say that because she was a republican and she was buying the tickets for my Mom.

I am sure Bruce will sing all the songs on  Dangerous Songs (Mom had the record) but he will probably charge prices that will make them unavailable to the underdog, the downtrodden, the unions, the minorities etc. I am none of those, so I might go, or I might protest that the Boss is now the Man.