Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Catching Up

• I don't know why I can only have one creative outlet. Every free moment this past week has been funnelled into making necklaces like a demented jeweler. At first, every little bit of 20 centimeter trash that crossed my path was strung around my neck; now I'm going to the model train store and buying little tiny model train passengers to string around my neck. It's an obsession. It's also surprisingly expensive. Not raccoon food expensive, but still.
• Every few years I get an MRI, just to see if I've accumulated any more lesions. As you know, the last two have been marvellously stable. (Raise the pom poms high. No! New! Lesions!) This year, instead of saying "Set up a brain MRI before the end of the year," he said, "Set up a brain and cervical spine MRI. If radiology doesn't call you, you should call them." Of course, that little tweak to the instructions grew like kudzu in my mind and by the time I got the MRI I was all, "I have to have an emergency MRI! Why? What does the cervical spine do? Oh my god, it controls my breathing. Am I not breathing right? AM I DYING?" I am not dying..I can even change my chant to "No! New! Brain! Lesions! No! New! Cervical Spine Lesions!" What about the lower spine? What aren't they telling me?
• I haven't seen much of Gary because I have tired of the audio loop of "HE LIES! Can't they see that he LIES? Why are they giving him air time?" We did go out (to the craft store, to buy jewelry-making stuff, because that's all I do now) and he encountered an articulated miniature skeleton labelled "Hal Skeleton." We honestly spent five minutes pondering why he was named Hal. When we see skeletons we think "bathroom," not "Halloween."  Hal has replaced the Coca-Cola bears, the sock money, and the rat as the thing to hide around the house.

 

 

UPDATED: Yard Signs

A few weeks ago, I said to Gary, "You know what's weird about this election? I haven't seen a single Trump or Hillary yard sign." 

But what Gary heard was, "We have to to put a Hillary 2016 sign in our front yard!"

I don't want that yard sign. I'm not a yard sign kind of gal. I was, for one term, an Obama bumper sticker kind of gal, but yard signs are a different animal. First, they're far more unsightly than a bumper sticker. I don't like things sticking up out of the yard. I don't like the advertisements the yard maintenance people stick I the yard, and those are diminutive compared to a yard sign.

So, first, Ugly, and then second, Futile. No one ever drove past a yard sign and changed their vote for president. 

And third, of course, is that on my working class street I could just as well put up a sign that says Egg My House. They'd appreciate it as much as I'd like seeing a Trump sign in their yards, and if I put this Hillary sign out a Trump sign would sprout up for checks and balances.

Gary is so deeply in the tank for Hillary I know he's disappointed. He sees it as some type of mezuzah, I'm sure.  I don't care. Good fences make good neighbors, and yard signs do not. 

I personally want to take it and sneak it into the yard of either the friend who hates Hillary so much she's voting for a Trump, or the friend who hates Trump so much she's voting for Johnson.

UPDATE: while I was very firm in my objection, Gary decided to compromise and put out "only one" of the two signs he bought. If we disappear blame the neighbors. 

UPDATED: Necklace

i don't know what I have against beads. Well, except that they're expensive. At least now I've leveled up from actual trash.

UPDATE: I wore it to work Tuesday and only fifty percent of the people I spoke with noticed I was wearing tiny bags of Fritos around my neck. 

We Age Twenty Years Over Labor Day Weekend

Friday

Friday, Gary and I went kayaking at Creve Couer Lake. Since then I have woven kayaking into every sentence I can. "What do you want for dinner, Ellen?" "That kayaking really made me hungry. Let's have pizza." Or, "Ellen, do you remember the last time I bought nuts?" "Friday, either before or after we went kayaking."

The actual plan was to paddleboard, but even the experienced paddleboarders said it was too windy. I saw their two-person kayaks were not the turtleneck-of-death kayak that flips over and traps you suspended under the water, but instead an open-top plastic "ocean" kayak that wouldn't flip over, and even if it did you could escape. 

We kayaked for an hour. At one point an egret landed four feet from us. It was all lovely. It would have been perfect, but I fell up to my neck in the water getting out of the kayak. So close.

I felt about thirty on Friday.

Sunday

I woke up well before Gary on Sunday, and I decided to do a little research on my insurance situation. My MS drug, Gilenya, goes generic in 2019, and that's when the kind Gilenya folks stop paying for it. Or rather, the kind drug "loyalty program" stops paying my deductible. I suppose since my deductible is $3k, i shouldn't care that the drug has gone from $4k a month to over $6k. All the same to me. Still, a generic version of a $6k a month drug isn't going to be $150 a month. 

Still, that made me start thinking about what I'm going to do after I retire. it looks like the insurance will be $500 a month and the deductible with be $6k. 

My head was full of Medicare and prescription bills when I went out to tidy up the house, and I found a pile of Werthers candy scattered across the cluttered table by Gary's recliner, and is there a better thumbnail image for an old couple? Oh, of course there is. I put the Werthers in a crystal candy dish. There, that just pins it. 

Sigh. I feel sixty. And we were kayaking just days earlier. 

Cheekbones

I've recommitted to my diet. After two days of recommitting I noticed my cheekbones were more defined.

For half a week I would admire my newly defined cheekbones every time I went to the bathroom, so, ten times a day.

This morning I realized one of the bathroom lightbulbs is burned out.

Sad. I am no thinner, I just chanced into better lighting.