Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Good and Faithful Servant

For twenty-seven years we've had the same refrigerator:

It has served us well. But then, Gary started cooking and the fridge that was plenty big enough for two people is now too small. ("WE CAN'T HAVE A SALAD ELLEN THERE ISNT ENOUGH ROOM IN OUR RERIGERATOR FOR A BIG SALAD BOWL."  "Make a small sal - " "NO.")

So, we started looking into shiny sexy stainless refrigerators. And we had to establish some rules.

Rule #1 - No icemaker. Icemakers are the devil's playthings. They flood your kitchen, they dispense too little ice, too much ice, they're noisy, they break they break they break. I've never had one, but I hear stories. We don't use ice.  I use my ice cube trays for Silk's tip about making measured lemon juice cubes for cooking. If they made lemon juice icemakers I'd consider it.

Rule #2 - No kitchen redesign. This means the fridge stays by the wall, so no pricey french-door models. God bless Sears for their specification of "width with door open 90 degrees."

"Oh," said the salesman, "On this model you can swap the side the door opens - "
"Shut your mouth right now," I said. I can make my life hell, you mean. Gary even became reasonable about the door-switch lie after I made him demonstrate dinner prep with myself playing the role of left-hinged refrigerator door.

Rule #3 - We keep the old refrigerator. Our electric company has a program in which they'll take away your still-running fridge and give you fifty bucks. I suppose fifty bucks is a small price to pay to reclaim the technology that keeps a refrigerator running for twenty-seven years. I found this post that suggests we might have a rare immortal refrigerator with a special design.  So, nice try, Ameren Electric, but you will not get my hands on my miracle technology that will put Amana out of business. (That conspiracy theory takes on greater weight when you consider the spiritual genesis of the Amana Corporation.)

The trusty Amana is going out in the garage. My family always had a garage fridge; Gary's didn't. Why? Beer. Evidently the garage fridge is the beer fridge. Growing up I don't ever remember seeing beer in our kitchen fridge, but I always remember Dad with beer in his hand.

Since we don't drink beer, the garage fridge will be MINE ALL MINE, filled with all my pre-portioned breakfast and lunches, calories all counted, weighed and measured, mene mene tekel et cetera.

Until it dies a week after we move it to the garage, of course. You know that's going to happen.

The Most Awkward Social Gaffe You Can Imagine, or, My iPhone is Evil

I'm going to have to bore you with minutiae before I tell you about the most horrifying faux pas I have ever inflicted upon my friends.

Today I was in a text conversation with three of my friends. There was a pause in the conversation and I put the phone back in my purse without leaving the conversation.

I worked for about six minutes, then I got up and had a conversation in the hall with Jumper Lady. I complimented this woman at length last week about a cute jumper she had on. I asked her in the hall if the jumper she had on today was the same jumper she had on last week. Yes, it was.

Then, I stopped in the bathroom to do what one does in the bathroom and to check my phone.

There was a weird symbol in the text message screen that looked like an audio file. "What is that," I thought, as I joined the conversation again. "It looks like an audio file." I hit a button thinking I could play a bit of it, and then suddenly it was on another part of the screen. Like, I had sent it to my friends.

"Oh no, I thought. "That came from me? My phone recorded me behind my back?"

Did I butt-text my friends?

Take a moment to imagine how bad this recording could be. After I mentioned I was in the bathroom, Marcia certainly had a good time speculating. I didn't dare listen to it while I was still in the bathroom, because I didn't have any earbuds, and what might I have broadcast?

I freaked out that my phone might have blackmailed me and turned it off until I got back to my desk.

I had to sit at my desk and listen to four minutes of total silence until I heard ...

"Is that the same jumper? I love that jumper!"

"Noooooooo," I thought, "Nooo. Maybe it cuts off before I go in the bathroom."

Noooooo. Doesn't. The last bit is:

1, Door opens.

2, Flush! (I did some pre-flushing).

3. Ploop! (A delicate little high-pitched ploop sound. Nothing to be ashamed of.)

4. Deafening peeing sounds.

5. Me taking the phone out of my purse.

6. And finally a distinct computer plink AS I ACCIDENTALLY SEND THE AUDIO FILE OF ME PLOOPING AND PEEING TO MY FRIENDS.

Sheesh. I will not live this down any time soon, especially since I recently chastised them for breaking the Bathroom Social Contract and talking in the bathroom, instead of adopting Total Bathroom Deafness, as you do. "I will never pee in front of you again," I said.

So I guess my phone must have heard me and decided to have a little fun.

A Pictorial

Last week I was tucked in bed at one end of the house. Gary was going out back to check the wildlife camera to see what's been moving the bricks.

Every morning last week Gary had to re-arrange the bricks around the peanut feeder box, because every night something scattered them. He suspected the squirrels were doing it. In the past he fed them tree nuts, and they'd eat their fill and bury the rest. The tree nut supply dried up and he had to switch to peanuts. The squirrels would bury the tree nuts, but evidently peanuts aren't dirt-worthy. He suspected the squirrels were enraged by the switch to a lower grade of manna and were hurling the bricks around in a rage. So he was headed out to get the photographic evidence.

I heard Gary open the back door. Then I heard both these sounds simultaneously:

a) An ice storm.

b) Gary screaming.

I did not leap up to rescue Gary, because as you all know he screams at moths and harsh light and junebugs. I was more interested in why we were having an ice storm in October. I didn't get a chance to ponder that, because I heard:

"ELLEN! COME IN HERE NOW!."

I hopped out of bed. He was still by the door. "SKUNK," he screamed.

"What?"

"I JUST SAW A SKUNK ON THE PATIO."

"Oh you did not."

"I WAS EYE TO EYE WITH A SKUNK! IT HISSED AT ME!"

Huh, I thought. So, a hissing skunk sounds like an ice storm. Good to know. 

Still, I had doubts. I asked, "How do you know it was a skunk?" Because really, Gary could see any dark-furred mammal and gin it up to The King Of All Skunks before the neurons even finished transmitting the image to his brain.

"IT WAS A SKUNK THE SIZE OF A SMALL BEAR!"

"Did it have the white stripe down the middle of its back? Did you see the stripe?"

His annoyance made him calmer, at first. "It had a STRIPE ON ITS SIDE. I KNOW what I SAW. Why are you interrogating me? Didn't you hear it?"

"No; I know something hissed at you, but if the stripe's on its side maybe it was a beaver or an oposs -"

'IT WAS A SKUNK WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU IF WAS TWO FEET FROM ME I COULD HAVE STEPPED ON IT."

I was still skeptical, because hey, everyone knows skunks have stripes on their backs, not on their sides.

It turns Pepe LaPew is not anatomically correct.

 

Wikipedia backed Gary up. Skunks have side stripes.

"Hah!" Gary said, "I bet that skunk's on the photos. I bet that skunk's the one tearing up the bricks."

The photos tell the tale.

 

"Fools! Squirrels don't bury peanuts. Now there are nuts left over every day. All these nuts belong to me!"

 

(Two raccoons go into a bar and share some peanuts.)

 "Cheese it! Something smells ..."

"It's a skunk! I'm out of here."

 

"Are you sure you're a skunk? Skunks have stripes on their backs, not their sides."

 

 (Evidently both raccoons and skunks know to step back when the doe shows.)

(Two deer go into a bar and share some peanuts.)

Damnit! The deer ate ALL the nuts! Don't they know how to share?

(And finally, wholesale destruction by enraged raccoons.)

~~ FIN ~~

I looked at the photos and said to Gary, "That skunk was the size of a small bear?"

Geocaching Post Ferguson

We had another eventful weekend. Watched The Martian Friday night at the ten o'clock show. My review of the film? I was awake the entire time. As always, we stayed for the credits. There's a nice extra bit of musical humor there. Then, at the very very end, when it occurs to you that you just saw an appalling amount of money spread out for your entertainment, it pops up with a final message about how many jobs the movie created ... as if it read your mind.

Because the only thing we did Saturday was cash in a two-for-one coupon at McDonald's, we decided to lay on the fun Sunday and try geocaching. I believe Silk wrote about doing that with her granddaughter. It's like a computer-assisted treasure hunt.

The geocaching app said there was a cache near the Katy Trail, and we were headed there anyway for a walk. It was in the parking lot of the Family Arena, down by the river. The lot was empty, because no second-place American Idol contestant was performing Sunday afternoon.

The GPS led us to a spit off the lot with nothing in it but a light standard. "Hmph," I thought, "The cache is obviously hidden in the light standard. We picked the easiest level: I guess they meant it."

Then we looked a little more closely at the abutment. It was infested with spiders.

The cement was disintegrating, and every pockmark had a daddy long-legs tucked up in there. I made the typical old-person remark: "They just built this arena," because of course I remember when they built it and it was yesterday, damnit. Just like last weekend, when we visited Union Station downtown and discovered that whole entertainment complex is slated for destruction, yes, the one they just built thirty years ago.

Anyway, I peered at the daddy long-legs. The geocache was described as small, and I wondered if maybe I'd have to evict a spider and dig out a micocapsule. There didn't seem to be anywhere by the light standard to hide something. Gary was working up the nerve to scale the pole or to unscrew the screws, when we noticed:

The thing we were going to unscrew lifted right up.

And there was our cache in the upside down blue pill bottle. It wasn't a real cache with trinkets, just a log we could sign. I still had a sense of accomplishment. It was kind of like playing a video game, where you click around and find some power-up, only it was a pill bottle with a tattered list of names.

We could have used a power-up, given what happened after that.

We left our car in the lot and headed for the Katy Trail by the river. We started down a foot path to get close to the river, until we saw the blankets some campers had left behind. Then it occurred to us the campers might still be there. We turned back to find a policeman by our car.

Gary immediately pled guilty. "We aren't supposed to be park here, are we." Mind you, the lot was utterly deserted.

"No, it's fine." the officer said, "I'm here because someone reported gunfire here about five minutes ago."

My turn to confess. "We lifted up that metal part of the light standard. That might have made a banging sound."

"No, if there was gunfire you couldn't miss it."

"There are some blankets down by the river," I said, rolling over on the blanket people. "They might have heard it."

"Probably homeless people," he said, dismissively. "Thanks, folks."

I think we made it around one bend, about one hundred yards, before Gary aborted the walk. You'd think we were under fire, as antsy as he got. I didn't help when I pointed out that we were both wearing hoodies.

When we got back from our one hundred yard walk there were already three police cars in the lot. Before we drove off, Gary took a bag of jam that had been rolling on the car floor and put it in the trunk.

When he got back in the car he said, "Oh God, they just saw me put something in the trunk. Like that's not suspicious."

The troubling thing, or some might say the encouraging thing, or some might say the obvious thing, is that if this all had happened five years ago I'd assume the officers were probably joining up to give some hot cocoa to the homeless down by the river. That's not my assumption any more. This year I know that if Gary and I were brown people in hoodies wandering around destroying light standards in the vicinity of gunfire, well, we'd be detained for questioning.

Things change. Or do our perceptions of them change?