Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Sleepy Bullets

• My new early hours mean if I don't get a blog in before ten it doesn't get done. On the other hand, I got up today at 6:30 and weeded the front bed. No one in our neighboorhood cares about weeds or lawns or anything since the tornado. The fence and tree people said that they couldn't get to us before the end of the year. We have much more sympathy with Katrina victims still in trailers and Haitians still in tents.
• Steve at work suggested we all give the government what they're looking for and pepper all our emails with red flags. "Okay, I'll see you later. Explosives." or "I liked the movie. C4. Harrison Ford is still cute."
• Gary loves me enough to drive me to the opening of the new wing of the art museum, but not enough to parallel park, so instead we went to the Science Center. We'll try again on July 5.

 

Big House Dream of the New Order

Gary, as you know, often has Big House Dreams. Sometimes they require extensive analysis. Sometimes the Big House has a giant underground parking garage, or has teenagers running through it.

Tonight Gary woke me up with a Big House Report.

What was special about tonight's Big House?

"You paid for it!"

Germaneness. Germanification. Oh the Germanity.

At about ten thirty at night Twitter told me that there was an actual honest to God Jimmy Stewart fillibuster going on.

Of course, I didn't get to YouTube in time to see State Senator Wendy Davis speaking, because the Texas Senate was spanking her for talking about sonograms during her abortion filibuster. Texas must have different rules. US Senators get to read recipes aloud during their filibusters, rare though they are. The complaint is that sonograms are not germane to abortions.

Right now other senators have stepped up and are debating the germane-ness of sonograms v abortions. And you have never heard the word "germane" in so many forms in your life.

Whoops - wait - there's half an hour to go and arrrrrgh - they're calling the roll. Damn! So close! There's a little rioting going on in the gallery, not much though.

......PASSAGE OF TIME....

So now there's ten minutes to go and the gallery has evidently decided to scream so loudly no one can vote. I swear, this is the best reality show EVER. I don't even care who wins.

Pandas and Statues and Bears, Oh My!

Where are the bears? They're everywhere.

Bears in Shrubs

Rusty the Red Panda at the National Zoo decided leave the zoo and seek asylum in a suburban shrub this morning. The thing that delights me about that story is that "Code Green" is code for AWOL animals, the same code Barnes hospital uses for AWOL patients.

Bears in Denver

Never been to Denver, but I want to go now that I've seen the statue installed outside the convention center.

Even better from the inside.

So, Red Pandas, Code Greens, Blue Bears ... no place to go but camo...

Bears in Trees

Sometimes you eat the bar, sometimes the bar eats you, sometimes the bar makes you crap your pants. Many thanks to Zayrina for this excellent nature video:

 

Longest Day of the Year

This damn sun in the evening has me all screwed up.

Well, truth: it isn't the sun that has me screwed up. it's the continous presence of my personal center of the universe, the Gary. He's a constant from two pm when he rises to two am when he goes to sleep.

I'm having to shuffle my schedule and I'm not used to it.

For example, there's no alarm. I no longer wake up at 5:30, then hit the snooze button at 5:39, then 5:48, then every nine minutes after that because Gary has to wake up slowly over a period of three hours.

Instead, I wake up naturally at 6:30, and then I'm asleep at ten pm, when, as you may have noticed, I used to blog.

So my mornings are off, therefore my nights are off, and my evenings are off too.

There was a daily evening period of Waiting For Gary which was very, very productive. I watched any contraband TV: gangster movies, Breaking Bad. Usually, I made myself dinner or grocery shopped or other household chores. Let me be clear: I DO NOT MISS the nights of waiting for Gary, and I certainly do not miss the chores.

As of this week Gary has elected to do some of the chores. Gary tidied up one day, and did some meal planning another day, and made a salad two nights ago. He did all these things spontaneously. I'm delighted. Most important: he does the dishes. He has his own way of washing the dishes. He runs the dishwasher every night, even if there's only one dish in it, fine, whatever, no water for your great-grandchildren, sorry, and then the next day when there are dirty dishes in the sink he opens the washer, leaves the clean dishes in there, and adds the dirty dishes. And washes them. And then the next day, again. It goes on and on. Some dishes may dissolve from all the washing.

I waited it out, held my tongue and two nights ago when the cycle completed ... there was no room in the washer for any new dirty dishes. He was forced to unload the washer. Today I asked him to clarify his process and said, "theres a rinse button on the washer that only takes seven minutes."

"The dishes would look too clean then, and I wouldn't know if the dishes were really clean or just rinsed."

So, I couldn't argue with that, and not doing the dishes totally works for me. Sorry about the 2032 drought that kills your descendants.

Whew! Finally Flickr

I don't remember Flickr beign so complicated when we came back from Paris. Yeesh.

Anyway, here is the Quebec Flickr stream.

 

Confession

I have a long hairline on my neck. At times the stylist will cut my back hairs above my hairline and will have to shave off the neck hairs.

I do not maintain my neck hairs after that.

For some reason, this time I am worked up about this. I find myself keenly sensitive to every stubble neck I see. I keep rubbing my neck hairs. I'm pretty sure I'll have to do some neckscaping before the next haircut.

Do we do this? Any other hairy necks out there? Do we wax or shave or what? Or do we ignore?

 

The Glorious Room in Québec

When I made the reservation, I stressed that Gary must be able to open the window and step out (and bless his people like the Pope).

I also mentioned that I found the round windows charming.

They tucked us into this specific room.

See? There's the bathroom window.

Since the room was dark when we got in I did not appreciate the glory of the curved wall until the next morning.

I found the bed very comfy, but of course that's in contrast to the Marital Bed of Pain I have to endure at home. (Gary likes a firm mattress.)

The remarkable thing about this hotel is that it was originally a warehouse from the 1600s, and when they expanded they dug up many artifacts. (More, I suggest, than the disappointingly thin Museum of Civilization next door.) They had all these bits, so each room has a scrap of ancient debris on the door plate. We had debris in the desk as well. Two bitty scraps of ancient barber dish.

I don't know why there was an alphabet border on the carpet. I should have asked the concierge.

Oh! The concierges! Lovely to have a concierge. (Not as lovely to have as a butler, as some do.) For example, say you have a whaling tour and are to be picked up outside the Musee de Civilization next door. It is five after nine. The husband is convinced you have the details wrong. You just bop back into the hotel and ask Genevieve the Concierge what is up, and she gets on the phone with the tour agency and rattles away en Francais and says there has been a traffic tie up and the bus will be there soon. At nine fifteen the husband is in a panic again, so you trot back into the hotel and as soon as she sees you Genevieve gets on the phone, this time in French with a bit of a tone, and then explains to you they are sending another bus. Then that evening when you return, Charles, the evening concierge, asks you how the whale tour was.

I love having a concierge.

Gary hates it. He spent half a day with his head in his iPad on a question he could have asked the concierge in five minutes.

So independent, though.

To counter the wonderful concierge, and the wonderful breakfasts at the hotel restaurant Panache, there was dreadful room service.

That's eighty dollars worth of burgers, salad, and dessert, and ... well, it's my own fault for ordering that salad. It was lobster, parmesan, and pamplemousse. I even knew pamplemousse was grapefruit. Why would I think that would be good? And why was I surprised when the next night's cream of celery root was tasteless? How tasty did I think celery root was?

Local bistros were no better. They know they have you trapped, so we went through forty dollar pizzas and sixty dollar pastas until eventually we got wise and had foix gras and filet, with dessert, for a "mere" ninety dollars.

Les toilettes du Québec

The bathroom at Le Lapin Sauté you have seen before; it's the one with the step:

The bathroom in our hotel room was fabulous. Absurdly ridicuously fabulous.

That doesn't even show you the powerful commode behind its cunning pocket door.

Of course, what I want to tell you about is the public toilet in Place Royale, a public square with a church and buskers. It's a nice relief from the claustrophobia of narrow cobblestone streets and tall quaint houses.

(That car is lost.)

Place Royale was a few blocks from our hotel, and we were heading back to our spacious hotel bathroom after lunch one day when I weighed my urgent need against the walk and decided the cleanliness of the public toilet would be the tiebreaker. I still remember the public toilet in Paris.

I peeked behind the door marked "Toilettes" and saw this:

Yeah, I thought, I'm going to turn the corner and find an open sewer with a hole over it.

But no!

That's a public bathroom in a public square! I know! It made up for all the stairs.

Les escaliers de Québec

 Quebec is a lovely town built on a cliff.

Tourist sites assure you there is a funicular that will tote you between "Lower Town" and "Upper Town."

 What the DON'T tell you is that "Lower Town" is "Lower Steep Hill that Requires a Handrail."

Upper Town (where they wisely placed the fort to defend Canada from the Americans) is "Upper Gentle Incline Which Will Wear On You Over Time."

There are wooden steps.

Stone steps.

Shopping steps.

And a newly constructed set of 360 steps that get you from the bottom of Upper Town to the Top of Upper Town. Yeah, we took those steps.

If you don't mind going a mile out of your way you can get from the bottom to the top of the town in a wheelchair.

 "How many steps?" you ask. Steps in the toilet.

"No really, how many steps?" Gary and I lost three pounds each. That's how many steps.

Still Not Very Many Words ... but Random Photos

It's a double classic: the classic plate cover shot and the classic art mimic shot.

Here's the list I made before we left:

Of course we forgot the light coats, so we had to buy them when we got to Quebec City. We had a close call when Gary picked a jacket at the first shop he saw without looking at the tag. The saleswoman had me in another room when I checked the tag on the jacket she was selling me. I immediately bolted for the men's side of the shop, where Gary had picked out a jacket and had it on the counter.

"Gary. Ask what that jacket costs."

Eight Hundred and Eighty Dollars for a light jacket. Even Gary couldn't do it.

Instead we ponied up Ninety bucks USD, still way too much for cheesy tourist hoodies that we grew to hate. Still, they saved our health on the whale watch.

 

Finally Home

Twelve hours and two flights and we're finally home. Of course we were worried about what we'd find, because if you remember there was no power when we left, BECAUSE OF THE TORNADO. 

We'd cleared out the fridge before we left because we had no idea when the power would be back. Usually, I like to clean the house thoroughly before I go on a trip. You don't want to come back home to dirt when you've lived in splendor for a week. (More later on the splendor.) But Gary insisted that we NOT clean, because we should focus on packing, and then the tornado arrived and fouled everything up. We got as far as running the dishwasher.

The house smelled musty: that was about it.

Well, until I repositioned an oven mitt on the counter and found an oven-mitt shaped ...

Colony

Of

Maggots.

You'd think I would scream, but no, I can report that maggots make we whimper and point, and that makes Gary scream. (To quote: "WHAT IS IT WHAT IS IT I'M NOT COMING OVER THERE UNTIL I KNOW WHAT IT IS.")

There was another maggot on the kitchen sponge. The sponge and both oven mitts are in the trash bin now. Another maggot came up out of the foul-smelling drain, so we drowned him in bleach.

We don't usually have maggots.

What we finally decided was that the dishwasher cycle was interrupted early in by the power failure, so the dishwasher turned into a steamy slow cooker of food residue. Of course, I don't know how the flies got in there, but they laid eggs and then the maggots came through the garbage disposer and drain and nestled in the evidently damp oven mitt and kitchen sponge.

Or, perhaps God has visited us with pestitlence because the tornado didn't get us.

Mary Joseph and the eTrade baby

Check me out: I'm Jesus. Here's how you can save for retirement! Joseph is giving Jesus the snake eye. "She says she's a virgin but the kid's a blond."

Gary's been more Catholic than the pope this week. He stopped me from walking across the altar, he knew all the saints by sight, he argued the etiquette of placing Mary's graven image higher than Jesus'.

Privacy schmivacy

Dear CNN -

Every time I log in to work I am greeted with the cheery message that my employer is reading my email.

The Supreme Court long ago ruled that email is not private. If you want privacy, don't use email. It isn't private. Your cell isn't either; it probably still shares a frequency with a baby monitor. You could just as well have a conversation at Denny's and then complain that the waitress overheard you.

So, CNN, I've given you a day of my vacation while my husband sleeps off an impending cold, and I don't see why you're so shocked that the government is recording every cell phone call, or looking at our Google searches.

(Oh, and government, if you're reading this, hi! and you know all those Google searches I did about a month ago to find the Anarchist's Cookbook? I was just curious about ricin.)

It isn't a safety vs freedom issue for me. The Internet is as public as a public swimming pool to me. If I dress up in a swimsuit and go to the pool I can't complain that my privacy's violated if someone lays eyes on me. If you wanna come look, and you're my boss, or an FBI agent, well, that's kind of creepy, but I can't complain that my privacy's been violated, can I?

I know a lot of people disagree. Is there a legal argument I'm missing? There must be.

At the falls by QC

Fetal cheese

We did two things today: fight bitterly with tears (as you do) and buy cheese (rah).

The cheese purchase was especially fun because when I explained my French was "une petit peu" the Cheese Lady said "moi anglais une petit petit peu."

I said "jeune cheese?"

She sliced off some cheese and I tried it.

"Too ... sharrrrp?"

"Parfait!" I smiled and patted my belly.

Gary shook his head vigorously. "Sharp!" Big thumbs up from Gary.

She sliced a piece of a different cheese for Gary. He rubbed his belly and we bought some of that too.

I tried Gary's slice and I deserve an Oscar for the shuddering performance.

"No like sharrrrp?"

"Non! Bebe fromage," and I cradled an imaginary baby. She laughed heartily.

So we're enjoying tonight's twenty bucks of cheese FAR more than last night's eighty dollars worth of hamburgers.

Interesting eggs b

Hollandaise and egg and shredded meat (beef? Pork? Not sure) on top of toast points. Smelled wonderful. At the hotel restaurant. Third time we've been there in two days. I know.

Room technology

So we got into this room and couldn't turn on the lights. We hit every switch and button. Finally we groped for the phone and called the front desk.

The man who came up could not help and promised to send an electrician.

Of course, we had just left a dark house, and what do you use in a dark house? A flashlight. And Gary in his disaster-inspired genius PACKED THE FLASHLIGHT because you never know if a tornado will strike Quebec City.

Eventually he found the device on the wall that read "insert key card for power." I've never heard of such a thing but one key powers the room. If you remove it the power fails.

So then he spent an hour debugging the room. There were no actual bugs, but technological bugs.

Of course, I ran into two techno problems. I couldn't regulate the shower and I couldn't make the coffee maker STOP MAKING COFFEE. (I unplugged it.)

Now I need to figure out the iron and this very complex ironing board.

Eventually he did his signature move: he opened the window and stepped out on the balcony, and pronounced it a great room. Something about balconies make him feel like a king.

Long long day

So yesterday we woke up and surveyed the tornado damage. Post tornado Pro Tip: if you are asked the question "how are you doing" by a neighbor in the street, there are two correct responses. You can say "I lost two trees," or you can say "I'm FANTASTIC!" depending on if you have followed the parade to view the devastation. Pro tip! Remember that for when the tornado attacks your street.

Them what you do is pack in the drizzly semi dark, dump spoilables from the warm fridge, and fly off to Quebec City. Screw this country! The neighbors are jealous because by the time we get back all the dead trees will be tidied up.

It was hard to do, because we both felt protective of the house and then we had to leave. Well, that's why I had trouble. Gary applied Gary Math and by the time his calculations were done it would take $7000 to clean up the yard and we couldn't afford to take vacation. I tried to reason that it would be cheap to take down the trees because hello, trees are down, they just have to chop and drag them to the street.

But somehow I got him to Quebec City anyway. We arrived at 10:30, and finally learned how to use the high tech room at 1 am.

Later on that, though, speaking of long.

Aftermath

Here's my new pet peeve: hearing the news copters overhead and having no way to watch the news.

So we decided to get out of bed after four hours of sleep. Ten houses away: that house has no exterior walls left. I think all that's left is the bathroom. It's some tiny room. The house nine houses away looks like the weather event tried to suck the laundry room out of the side of the house.

I say "weather event" because I haven't heard officially if there was a tornado. If there was I want you all to know this story of tornadoes sounding like a train is pure bullshit. I heard no train.

I'm out in the car because there is still no power. The national news talked about Oklahoma, of course, as they should, because if a tornado hits your house a week after a tornado hits your house, that's news.

Fox and channel four are a block away. We talked to a neighbor and he said his insurance agent was out at his house at ten last night.

The local news says we had "severe weather." I was very confused looking at the house twelve houses away, trying to figure out how someones bathroom got on top of their house and I realized they used to have a two story house.

Sobering. And I feel powerless, literally, because there is still no power. And incredibly lucky.