Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

I Have Been Entirely Too Tasteful in My Hat Selections

No one should be surprised I have a modest collection of hats.

It is a modest collection of tasteful hats, which should surprise you. It surprised me when I went through my hat collection, searching for a hat grand enough for the Kentucky Derby. Specifically, grand enough for the brief moment I will be on TV, because somehow I scored row A, on the rail, section 125, right past the last turn, just where Secretariat made a break for it.

So here are my hats.

(Before you ask, it is a latex glove mold.)

 

Hats, in order of combined size and taste.

Black eyebrow hat

 

Wedding Cake Hat

 

Sad Sloppy Hat

 

French Hat

 

Formidable Nanny Hat

 

Garden Hat

 

Faded Crumpled Hat

 

Tea Hat

 

Sun Avoidance Hat

 

Handmade Hat

 

Handmade Hat was my first hat, a plain navy hat from the semester I wore only blue and navy. Years later I had to up its game so I could wear it to a tea party, so I added the boa and the birds.

 

I wore Wedding Cake Hat to many weddings. Tea Hat accompanied me to tea at the Ritz in London. Since I am not a French Country farm girl, I never really found a good use for French Hat. Formidable Nanny Hat got the most use, especially when I discovered salespeople at Plaza Frontenac sought me out when I wore it.

Not a single hat is appropriate for Derby Day. So, just as I did with my wedding dress, I can take the time spent shopping and just design and make what I want.

There was a day I wouldn't have to consider the shape of my face, but now I do. I shall bring back the wimple, no question about that.

 

And of course a huge brim, if I'm going to be walking next to these ladies:

 

I LOVE that this woman spilled something on her boob:

 

So:

a wimple.

Obviously some birds and a few ostrich feathers.

And we love the stuff piled up under the hat:

 

Though that almost looks tasteful next to the Gold Standard of Horse Race hats:

 ]

So you see while none of my hats will do.

I Have Been So Good All Year.

See, here's what happened.

I was putting on my orthopedic slippers yesterday morning and thought, "I am so boring. My life is boring." When all you do at night is file your dead mother's newspaper clippings, that's dull. Plus, Gary's been working all weekend and all nights, so life is without Gary excitement even.

But then, in a matter of hours, I found out BNL was part of a free concert in Louisville. Fun! Could drive to it. Could stay at the Seelbach, or 21c, or - wait, what? Sold out?

It's Kentucky Derby weekend. Damn. Have to stay at a Holiday Inn Express-y place 10 miles outside of downtown.

Still, cheap ride to KY, cheap hotel stay - wait, what? HOW much per night? Oh. Right. Derby weekend.

I feel virtuous that it took me almost a day before I bought two tickets to the Kentucky Derby.

Doodle

In my senior year of high school I was assigned an art project that was centered around my name.

I swear to you, the art teacher, Mr. Yochum, said my name wasn't prominent enough. "Make it red. Add some color."

Ironic, since I was afraid of color since Mr. Yochum once cried, "No!" sat down at my easel and repainted something I was working on so it was all shades of blue. (Mr. Yochum had a brain tumor. Shhhh. It came to light the next year.)

I really don't know if I could do any of those doodles today. In meetings I don't doodle. I do write "Shut up shut up shut up" over and over during meetings. (It's for me, not the people speaking.) If I'm really stressed I write biting commentaries about what people are saying.

If nothing else, I've since been able to cite Maddonna with a Long Neck as an example of Mannerism whenever I need to sound "arty."

Putting Mom In A Box

So, I'm finally sorting through and gleaning out and tidying up Mom's papers. I had whittled it down to one box, but then this weekend I realized I had four locations in my house where there was just one box of Mom's stuff. (I found all four Mom-caches searching for a cost basis for the last bit of stock I sold this year. Cost basis, I say. Having your Series 7 makes it very easy to fill out your taxes.)

Still, all four boxes o' Mom are assembled on the hearth. File folder labels have been made. Stacks are on the table!

EARLY MOM
DEATH FILE
LETTERS FROM MOM
LETTERS TO MOM
FAMILY HISTORY
MOMS WRITINGS

Of course, it takes forever because I keep seeing scribblings in Mom's hand. There's a letter dispensing my grandfather's estate, and next to one dipensee's name Mom has written, "I have no idea who this individual is." 

I think I can be motivated to get through everything if I tell myself I can sort through and read all the letters when the rest is boxed up.

This sorting and organizing phase was kicked off by doing my taxes, of course. My goal is to get it all straight by the time I get my refund.

Jacked-up Back

Bend with your knees, people. Right up there with "Sleep with a hat pin."

Yesterday morning I bent at the waist, spread my arms around a heavy footstool, and picked it up, or rather pulled my back and collapsed in pain. My only plans for yesterday were to snuggle in the guest bed and program, so I had no problem there.

I leaned heavily on my experience as a disabled woman's daughter. I wielded my grabby stick with confidence. I got a soda from the bottom of the fridge, cleaned up dog messes, and everything else I was supposed to bend over to do I just tossed on the floor. I chopped up the dog's canned food and rained it down on his plate from four feet up.

The evening was a problem because I was hungry. Gary's been working late on a huge project and I knew he wouldn't be home AND WOULDN'T FORCE HIS PIZZA PREFERENCES ON ME. I'm not talking pizza preferences that can be solved by saying "half pepperoni, half green pepper." No, I mean fundamental issues. Thin cracker pizza with pepperoni and Provel™ cheese (look it up; I can't talk about it), and hamburger pan pizza with normal god-given mozzarella cheese. Cecil B. Whitakers vs Pizza Hit. Snack pizza vs meal pizza. Pizza that sticks to your teeth vs pizza that sticks to your ribs.

So, pizza for dinner with Diet-Rite Tangerine Soda heavily dosed with Peachtree Schapps.

And now that it's after noon on the next day, I think I'll have the same thing for breakfast / lunch, plus anything else I can snag with the grabby stick.

How to Make Your Dog Hate You

The dog is on a schedule. He knows the only time we will reliably be home is between 11 at night and 6 in the morning. As such, he has decided this is "social time." He barks to wake us up at 2 to pee, at three to eat, at five to play, and at six to clean up the poop he did at four.

So, today I decided to lavish attention on him from six in the evening until ten at night.

I have never seen this dog so pissed off.

He hopped up in bed to take a nap while I did my early evening net-surf. I kept petting him, so he would know that now is when he gets attention, and so that he couldn't sleep now and later break the peace.

I nudged him with my foot.

"mmf!"

"Wake up, Mac."

After three of these nudges, he leapt to his feet, gave a short indignant woof, and marched off. Piiissssssed.

I coaxed him back. Then I kept nudging him. We went through the whole process three times tonight. I think he's only had about an hour of sleep all night. He marched off in the highest dudgeon about an hour ago.

I fully expect him to pee in my ear at two.

Look! It's a New Meme!

It would seem my brother has been shielded from some of the seamier points in our family history. We had a nice long chat tonight filled with "YOU didn't KNOW that" [relative] "WAS A" [fill in the perversion / felony / addiction ] "?"

He said he was traumatized and would need to go to an AA meeting.

I did some tallying up later, and the raw numbers are alarming. Without naming names, and only going back to my great-grandparents' generation, I took a count. Only a few things are illegal, and somethings are entirely legal but weren't at the time, and some things aren't even unethical but just show a degree of drama that raises my eyebrows.

7 abortions
1 attempted murder
5 alcohol addictions
1 assumed name
10 years in prison
1 opium addiction
3 divorces
1 voluntary incestuous encounter
3 attempted incestuous encounters (always sleep with a hat pin, kids)
7 kids in orphanages
3 families abandoned by a father
1 family abandoned by a mother
2 deaths in car wrecks
2 affairs by men
0 affairs by women
1 institutionalized pedophile
2 other institutionalizations
1 running-naked-down-the-street nervous breakdowns
5 people seeing psychiatrists
0 suicides (!)
1 embezzlement
0 rapes, that I know of (hat pins, I'm telling you)  Damn, I remembered one. Add on 1 resulting baby born in a bathtub
1 motorcycle accident
1 bootlegger / rum-runner
1 visitor to a sex store (me)

Okay, I want to know, is this excessive? Or, put another way, should I be proud of my colorful heritage? I know I can count a number of voluntary incestuous encounters and and criminal behaviors among my friends' families.

Copy this into the comments and let me know how your family stacks up to mine. It's okay if you have some zeros, you probably didn't have a big family.

The Return of the King

I'll be delicate while I tell you about my sortie to pick up a replacement vibrator. After the jump.

Gary's Birthday and Candles and etc.

Birthday
It was a gorgeous day today: perfect enough to meet my specifications, even. Not too hot, not too cool. But, it was also Gary's birthday, and I said I would do anything Gary wanted to.

Gary wanted to:
Sleep till three in the afternoon.
Wake up and watch the war for two hours. (Why do they have a vision of Hell behind Wolf Blitzer's head? What is that?)
Take a little nap from five till seven.
Wake up and watch a show on MSNBC I can only call "Best of the Tsunami."
Eat sausage and cheese and Jelly Bellys, then have a little lie down until nine thirty.
Watch Big Love and Shameless.
And then, I ASSUME, go to sleep.

I don't know. Perhaps his Love Language is sleep.

Candles
Gary shares his birthday celebrations with his sister Sandy, who was born within a few days (well, 3 years and a few days). She likes scented candles. "They relieve stress!" Other stress relievers are singing, watching candle flames, and aromatherapy. She hasn't turned her back on my chosen stress reliever: eating.

Well, Gary purchased some of those fat candles in glass jars with lids. This brought up the annual discussion of CANDLES ARE A FIRE HAZARD and the traditional telling of AUDREY PUT CANDLES ON HER COFFEE TABLE AND THEY BURNED DOWN AND THEN BURNED THROUGH THE COFFEE TABLE AND THEN BURNED A HOLE IN THE RUG. Every. Year. Every single year they have the same conversation and no ones mind ever changes.

Karen tried a new tack this year and tallied up what Sandy spends a month on candles. Futile.

I think Sandy's love language is candles, maybe. "I know you make bad decisions, Sandy, but I trust you with fire."

I don't burn candles. I don't see the appeal unless it's a party. Any candles I have now are burned in the fireplace, partly because Karen would walk around my parties and blow out the candles, and partly because I don't want to worry they'll burn through the coffee table and burn a hole in the rug. The Candle China Syndrome.

Etc.
Which is better for when you really have to empty your bladder?
Peesnami
Tsunampee

SuperMoon

In case you haven't heard, "Thanks to a fluke of orbital mechanics that brings the moon closer to Earth than that it has been in more than 18 years, the biggest full moon of 2011 will occur on Saturday, leading some observers to dub it a 'supermoon.'"

I tried to see the waxing supermoon last night, and though the sky was cloudy some of the supermoon rays were able to break through the clouds. Then I went back to sleep and had an incredibly long complex dream.

When I woke up I had this twitter exchange:

This your chance to take part in a worldwide science experiment. The true supermoon in Saturday night. Pay attention to your dreams and report back in the comments.

My Fantasy Grocery

Calgon would be sold by the dish cleaning products. Does anyone use Calgon for anything but soaking Corningware after it comes out of the dishwasher? Gary just called me from the Dierbergs, asking "Where is it? What is it?" I couldn't tell him. I thought it might be a bath product because of the old "Calgon, take me away" commercials.

There would be a grocery cow, and children and ladies all could tug on the teat to get fresh milk for a premium. Sour cream would be dispensed in something like soft-serve ice cream machines and be sold by weight.

They would not sell parsley in huge bunches, but in bunches measured out to be 1/4 cup chopped up. Similarly, green onions would be sold one at a time. Banana bunches would be pre-pulled apart. Watermelons would be genetically modified to be skinless. OR there'd be a little window you could use to look inside. Make that apply to all melons.

All cuts of meat would be single serving. Pepperidge Farm Geneva cookies would be exactly the same but the bag would be marked "single serving."

Chocolate, like alcohol, would be sorted by quality, with the best stuff on the top shelf.

There would be no "Minute" Tapioca. I bought some to use in the Bear Grylls "Manly Blueberry Pie" recipe in a recent issue of People which I found pointedly torn out and sitting on the bathroom sink. It is Gary's birthday month, so I made the pie. Bad. Recipe lies. It suggests the gritty instant tapioca is supposed to turn magically into something else while cooking, Why no. Gary only ate half, that's how bad it was.

Spunky Labia, International Toe Porn Superstar, says Happy St. Patricks Day

She wants to be clear: this green color does not symbolize support for Qaddafi.

 

The Vibrator is Dead. Long Live the Vibrator.

 

The last words of my favorite vibrator ever:

"zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ......... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ... zzzzzz ... " And the rest is silence.

Dead from a short in the cord. Or it just doesn't find me attractive any more.

I went to the Internet to find its twin brother, and of course was led astray by its blue rubbery two-headed cousin, TLC9906-8. 

So you'd think I'd have a photo of my new friend, in situ, or at least in the room but NO. I ordered it TEN days ago and it still isn't here. And given that the most lovable thing about The Late Vibrator was its speed (less than a minute), the WAIT for this new one is very frustrating.

Granted, I might have given my money to an Internet scam that assumes you would never contact them to complain that YOUR VIBRATOR IS LATE.  I emailed them. I didn't even imply they cheated me out of a vibrator (or as I called it, "Item number TLC9906-8.") I did not end with "P.S. I am VERY frustrated!"

I might have to go back to the store by the Mall where I met the dearly departed vibrator and buy him again. I might even stock up, since he seems to have a short life span. Serves me right for being unfaithful in my heart.

Breaking News

or

In Which We Mock News Channels, not the Japanese People

Yesterday's news: First off, someone tell Soledad O'Brien the reason Japan doesn't smell like death, like Haiti did, is because it's cold. It's below 40F. It's refrigerated. It's awful, but she should have thought of it.

Today's news: We have the slow-motion nuclear meltdown. 

"There was an explosion..." Hours later: "There's been a release of radiation..." Hours later: "There's a fire in the containment system..." Right now it appears "there's been some damage to the containment structure." It's like the old joke about the cat falling off the roof.

The disturbing thing tonight has been the news-network-wide desire to classify the disaster.

Anchor: "Is this the worst case scenario?"

Talking Head: "No. This could be worse."

Anchor: "How? How could it get worse?"

Talking Head: "As meltdowns go, yes, there is melting, but it isn't melted through. It isn't Chernobyl. It's Three Mile Island. Or between Chernobyl and three Mile Island."

Anchor: "So if Three Mile Island is a five, and Chernobyl is a seven, where are we now?"

Talking Head: "This is about a five point five. Right now." (Expectantly) "But it could get worse."

Anchor: (Again) "How? How could it get worse?"

Gary: "Mothra! Screee! Screee!" (Mothra screeching.)

Now they're talking about radiation levels and what isotopes cause what level of damage. "If one is thyroid damage, and five is Mothra, and ten is Godzilla rises from the sea, where are we now?"

Links

All I did today was ... clean the floors, make macaroni and cheese and creme brulee, and watch eternal tsunami footage. AND surf the internet. So, since I can't give you creme brulee, here are two awesome links:

When did we decide Atlantis was a real place?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110312/ts_nm/us_tsunami_atlantis

The Scrooge McDuck / Inception connection:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19021_5-amazing-things-invented-by-donald-duck-seriously_p1.html

A Polluted Mind

I remember reading War and Peace for the second time. Every incident in life had a parallel in War and Peace. My friend Vanessa popped out of her tight dress? Hélène Kuragin did the same thing in War and Peace. I had a fever? Prince Bolkonsky had a fever.

There are no earthquakes in War and Peace that I recall, or tsunamis, or nuclear reactor meltdowns. So my mind goes here instead:

"You can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor."

First, "The Gaddhafi Look," now this. I have seen too much SNL and read too little W&P.

I Think They Call This Photo Friday

Photo 1

Sometimes my drive home is just ridiculous.

 

Photo 2

I love the CNN employee TALKING ON THE PHONE during an 8.9 earthquake.

 

I assumed she was confirming sources and taking notes.

Earthquake

I woke up after my weekly Great Lie-Down (I used to make it to Friday, now it's crept to Thursday) and saw on Twitter - an 8.9 quake?

I remember watching Earthquake in the '70s with my Dad, and he scoffed, "A 9.0 earthquake? That's absurd. That's impossible."

But, those are early numbers. Five people have been reported dead, for example.

And tsunami warnings for ... well, let's say it, Big Dot and Hattie and and Greenwords ... and, well, everyone but Missouri.

My New Persona

I have something in common with these three characters.

Ethel Mertz

 
 

Helen Roper

 

Phyllis Lindstrom

 

Yes. I am officially going to be a landlady someday. An absentee slumlandlady, to be more precise. A property management company is managing the property for me. They are the heavies, the rent collectors and evictors. They get the calls about the furnace at 3 am. My duties are to give them 10% and stay out of it.

My preparations for the house are now minimal: I just need to finish the carpeting.  (Strangely, the guy on Income Property on HGTV never says, "Nah, those kitchen cabinets are fine enough for a renter." I was expecting all the wood to be painted that bogus white that fools no one.)

The woman also said, "I would never paint that paneling! That's in great shape."

"Friends for LIFE!" I cried, and fist-bumped her. The woman respects wood. We had a very nice talk, about all manner of things, primarily about the amount of ignorance I want in my bliss. (Total.) I told her of my plans to move an African-American family in to Mom's house just to spite the neighbors who pointedly tell me how "lucky" they've been in that corner of the community. (This is a dream I doubtless dreamt while reading "Raisin In the Sun" in American Studies in high school. I think I even remember fantasizing about integrating my neighborhood.)

So, this will be an adventure, anyway.

And Now, on a Very Special Hoarders ...

One of today's International Top Stories took place in Jennings, MO, a Saint Louis suburb.

Evidently, an elderly woman moved to Jennings in '93, during The Flood. She went to stay with her daughter, who was a hoarder. After a while, the elderly woman died, and the daughter hoarded her. Wrapped her up in  a shower curtain and some fabric. No one knew until the daughter died years later and relatives were cleaning out the home.

THAT is the feel-good version of the story. Mom is lovingly wrapped up because of her sentimental value. Can't throw away Mom. Or this Velveeta wrapper.

It could be that the reality is far darker. Mom could have been murdered by the daughter who still wanted to cash the Social Security checks. Or, Mom could have burrowed under some newspapers and just gotten lost.

Wouldn't you hate to be the relative cleaning up the house, you unroll a shower curtain and not only is there a mummy in there, you think it might be your great great aunt?

The Stages of Party Food

There's a Mardi Gras potluck at work tomorrow.

Back in the day, I would have made a frozen macadamia nut raspberry torte, which would have required hours of work and pricey supplies. I would win high praise, and everyone would ask for the recipe.

Tonight I thought, "I'm done with all that. I am over forty,  I proved myself to my new team at TeddyJ with the Pig Candy. I'm dialing it back. I'm just bringing Rye Bread Dip."

Rye Bread Dip is the go-to easy party food of Saint Louis. It is one step above a bag of Ruffles and Lipton's-French-Onion-Dip.

For countries where there is no rye bread, here is a photo.

 

Here is the recipe. Buy Rye bread. Cut a hole for the dip. It comes in a container labelled "Rye Bread Dill Dip." If you want to be all FANCY pour the dip out of the container and into the bread. Usually, I not only cube up the bread from the "hole," but I even go the extra step for my guests and cut a grid into the bread bowl so they can tear off chunks. Oooh. Lala.

Anyway, I was headed right for the grocery with the intent to phone-in the RBD, when I thought, "I could bring a cheese plate. No effort there. And I could make a play on Cheeses / Jesus. I could lay the cheese out in a cross shape. Cheeses on the cross. NO! I could get my three-tiered silver tray, put a printout of a Monty Python God representation at the top, and put the cheeses on the lower tray, and it would be Cheeses Ascending to Heaven.

 So, for that I had to drive to the gourmet deli 15 miles away.

And it was closed.

I checked the route to the Whole Foods from where I was. Then I came to my senses and thought, "No! Screw the cheese! Rye Bread Dip, damnit. I'm not cutting anything into cubes. No cheese, no bread, cut your own damn cubes, people."

So I drove back to the grocery, picked up a container of Rye Bread Dill Dip, and ... there was no rye bread. Why? It's a HOLIDAY. That rye was gone on Saturday.

So, hell. Cheeses? No. Not cubing up squat. I got a tray of sliced salami, a box of Triscuits, and a pecan cheese ball. I'm putting it out on a paper plate with a knife. Then I'm resting on my Pig Candy laurels.

Realty

I never understood the appeal of realtor shows on HGTV. Flip This House, Sell This House, Curb Appeal - all those shows. I watched a few, but really, why would I care about the cracks in some guy's laundry room?

Suddenly, I'm that guy. I'm improving Mom's home in case ten years from now there's a seller's market again.

Those shows are INSPIRATIONAL. I look at Mom's and lie down in despair, then I watch a show and realize all I have to do is make a budget, stay away from the house for a week while a team of dedicated non-smoking professionals fix the problem, then come back and gasp in delight. Then I write a check for $35,000.

I had my own "reveal" this weekend, when I went to Mom's after the painter finished. Kilim Beige all the way through.

 
(Lighter on the walls)

Then there's cream trim (exciting!) and I'm getting taupe carpet. Beige! Taupe! Cream! They scream for white wood doors.

And thanks be to the patience of Jack W_____ and Tammy, there is no wallpaper.

After the reveal, I came home. To my Crayola box carnival home. Foyer: maroon, Great room: sage and cream, bathroom: doctor scrubs green, Gary's room: a different color of sage, master bedroom: gold, guest room: wallpaper.

Now I want to strip my house, paint everything one color, and have nothing in each room but one piece of furniture.

In Which I Get a Woody*

* Title by (new father) Steve from work.

 

What is that? It's a Woody Burger. Steve told me about it. It is a bacon cheeseburger, with the buns replaced by grilled cheese sandwiches.

I don't know how Woody is, but I'm sure he's resting in peace somewhere.

I didn't eat the pickles.Pickles are nasty.

What Tammy Found

Where we left off:

At one point Tammy, the blond painter's assistant, found me and asked, "Did you grow up in this house?"

"Yes, since I was 11."

"I found a couple of things pushed in the back of the closet shelves."

Well, some of you know my Dad was a Porn Hoarder.  I hinted here that we found Porn nests after he died. I really thought we'd found all the porn he'd secreted away.

Deep breath. "Is it porn?" I asked.

Tammy was silent.

Perhaps she can't identify porn, I thought.

"Is it a magazine?"

She was silent.

Then she said, "I put it back on the edge of the closet shelf where I was painting before."

She'd been in MY old room. Dad hid porn in my old room? Ew.

She summoned up the strength to say, "It's a sketch."

Relief. I got the rolled up sketch down from the shelf and unrolled it ... this far.

 

A hairy male knee. Not porn! "Oh! This is something from Figure Drawing. In college. Ohhhh noooo..."

I unrolled as far as the balls.

 

Yep. Pure virtuous Christian Tammy had seen balls. And a stylized, scribbly penis.

 

Then I started wadding it up, and talking, and talking faster and wadding faster.

"Oh, yeah, I was in this Figure Drawing class. I remember this nude model. (wad. crunch.) He was so stoned one day he fell off his stool. (wad! wad! wad!) Figure drawing class was interesting I have no idea why anyone would have kept this sketch it isn't very good." 

(Only, I KNOW why my parents would have kept it: the nude model looks uncomfortably like my Dad.

 )

I made a big production of throwing it in the trash can. Then I apologized, said I'd let them get back to work, ha ha, and ran to the back den to hide while I waited for the no-show electrician. Still, before I gave up and left, I rescued the sketch from the trash. I had to explain to the painters that I thought my husband would get a laugh out of it. (What Gary said was, "GOD that's your DAD.")

Thank God, the virtuous blond Christian Tammy laughed and agreed he might find it funny, and I felt less uncomfortable. Until I drove back to the work lot and found the strength to fully unwad the sketch.

 

That girl on the right? That's Tammy. Of course, it's not present day Tammy, it's the Tammy Doppleganger who was evidently in my figure drawing class in 1981. (See: the feathered bangs.) She looks a little skeeved out, doesn't she? Nice Christian girl (See: cross) with a satyr / Dad leering at her over her shoulder. 

And of COURSE I can't apologize to present-day Tammy for having drawn her in a pervy tableau thirty years ago, before she was born. But I WILL. If I ever see her again. Because I can not just shut up.

I am sure that after seeing this image of her and satyr / Dad / Satan that Tammy is so skeeved out she will never have sex. Who knows, perhaps the Hand of God led me to draw this just so Tammy WOULD find it and never have sex.

God works in mysterious ways.

The Mom Time Capsule

The painters at Mom's have been picking off wallpaper with their fingernails, God bless them. (And I am sure God will: this team of two play soft Christian rock while working.) The house is full of sun. All manner of sins have been painted away. You can no longer tell which side of the bed Dad smoked in. You would think the thermostat had always been mounted three feet off the floor. Mirrors are off the walls and you can see layers of paint never seen since the sixties.

And.... the mirror is off the wall in the bathroom and the time capsule Mom left is exposed.

 

The BIG Reveal! Duh Duh Dunnnnnnn.

A button, reading "What's the sense in having a cat if you don't torment it?"

 

A pin, made in New Zealand, which is a native leaf specially treated with silver paint. I imagine I could add a newpaper article about the Christchurch time capsule they found after the earthquake. However, it might make my future homeowners jealous.

 

A bottle opener from Fairbanks Alaska, and the receipt for what the wallpaper in the room cost. (I removed that, because that $1,000 wallpaper is probably off the walls this very evening. Without the wallpaper, that item would be irrelevant. It would clash next to the timely relevance of the other items.)

 

A grocery receipt from 1991.  Cascade $2.99. Is that good? No idea. When this is discovered again, I hope that delights someone.

 

A measuring tape to show the antiquated way we measured things back in 1991.

 

And, finally, something kind of interesting. It isn't from 1991, in fact, I have no idea where this came from. As far as I know, Mom or Dad never went up in the Empire State Building. But yet, here are a bookmark and a souvenir receipt.

 

At one point Tammy, the painter's assistant, found me and asked, "Did you grow up in this house?"

"Yes, since I was 11."

"I found a couple of things pushed in the back of the closet shelves."

One was a Blues hockey ticket from 1971. One seat: $4. That went right into the Time Capsule purse.

The other thing?

You'll have to guess until tomorrow.

UPDATED: Resolved: Charlie Sheen is NOT Batshit Crazy

Dr. Drew professionally posits here that Charlie Sheen is bi-polar and having a controlled manic episode. Probably, but, perhaps Dr. D is wrong. Perhaps, Charlie Sheen is just too good at articulating what he thinks. Let's diagnose him as over-articulating. TooFineAPoint-itis.

I can relate. BNL fans sometimes over-articulate.  We are word fetishists and we express ourselves not wisely, but too well. Read any on-line review critical of BNL. Where most fans would defend their band with ...

"UR retarded!!! My band rulz!!!!!" 

... we comment, "Tell me, why are you dismissing the textured leitmotif in the third track?"  (Also, we say shit like "posit.")

And we aren't more passionate about our band than anyone else, it's just we sound more passionate because we weave into one sentence all the synonyms for "awesome."

( It's what inspired this scene from Community. Just go right to 3:16

And yes, the next week they said Pierce had been following BNL all summer. Keep it up, NBC. We like the attention.)

So, BNL fans over-articulate. Similarly, rulers of Middle-eastern countries over-articulate.  While an American politician might say, "I refuse to give in to these protesters," Gadhafi would say, "I want to die here as a martyr. Libya is the tree, and we have watered this tree with our blood."

Granted, Gadhafi is crazy, but maybe not as crazy as he sounds. Perhaps he just over-states his case.

Then, on to Charlie Sheen. Is he crazy? Or just really good at expressing himself? Let's look at his words.

"Last I checked, 'Chaim,' I spent close to the last decade effortlessly and magically converting your tin cans into pure gold."
This does sound like Libyan rhetoric, especially with the taste of Anti-semitism there.  I would have to stay up late crafting that "converting your tin cans" sentence, and he just rattles it off. Is that insanity? Or is he a poet?

"I'm sorry, man, but I've got magic. I've got poetry in my fingertips. Most of the time--and this includes naps -- I'm an F-18, bro. And I will destroy you in the air. I will deploy my ordinance to the ground."
No, I'M sorry, Charlie. Sorry you never got together with Maya Angelou and punched up Phenomenal Woman.

(On how he got sober) "Decide that you’re going to, and do it. It’s not that complicated. Just decide that you’re going to harness the power of your mind.”
People did sober up before AA. I think that might be how they did it. Is that crazy talk?

I'm just saying. Over-expressing. Putting too fine a point on it. Middle-Eastern Rhetoric. I wonder if Charlie Sheen likes BNL?

UPDATE: ===========================================

Here's an excellent quiz. Who Said It, Charlie Sheen or Muamar Gadhafi?