Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Two Once-in-a-Lifetime Experiences in Two Days

We totally saw the total eclipse. When I booked the hotel in Cuba MO (where my Grandpa had a farm), the Path of Totality wasn't over my house. Then, last month, NASA played with the estimates and I was one mile inside totality.

Too bad. I still needed to go to Cuba for the eclipse. I needed that extra few seconds of totality, plus I had another reason to go to Cuba. I had to fulfill my destiny. I had to conquer my white whale. I had to go to ... Onondaga Cave.

If you remember, I have missed many chances to go to Onondaga Cave. Every visit to Grandpa's farm, we would beg to go, and every time the parents would say no. Then I tried to go with Gary but we foolishly went on the Lord's day. Finally, we intended to go when we went Branson, but we were waylaid by the Cathedral Cave in the same park.

But now, I can check Onondaga off the list of 6,400 caves in Missouri that I need to see. I was no more awed by Onondaga than I have been by any other cave, until we were given the option to clamber up to see the Lily Pad room. Until I saw that room I was thinking, "This is my last cave. It's slippery, it's dangerous, and if I never hear about soda straws again, and never see pitch darkness again, I will be happy." Then the Lily Pad room restored my wonder.

How weird is that? Something happened in that room so that when the stalactites dripped on the stalagmites, they didn't create a point, instead they hit the water and spread into a lily pad shape.

So, from the bowels of the earth to the glory of the spheres: two days later we were looking at the total eclipse. Amazing. If you haven't seen a total eclipse, here's what happens:

• You spend over an hour peering through these glasses that blot out everything but the diminishing sun. And frankly, if you missed that, you didn't miss anything, because you've seen it when you look at a moon's phases. Looks just the same.
• Eventually, the last tiny ember of the sun blinks away, and you see nothing. It is safe to take off the glasses.
• You take off the glasses and it is the wildest thing you have ever seen. THE MOON HAS EATEN THE SUN. If I hadn't been expecting it I would lose my mind and slaughter all my livestock and sacrifice my children to keep it from happening again.

And, amazingly, what we saw was even more freakish than anything seen in any other solar eclipse, because we got the buildup. Past generations haven't had the glasses, we had to use the pinhole camera. This time we watched the sun be nibbled away into just a sliver, then total darkness, THEN you take off the glasses and it's like switching from a blurry 12-inch black and white TV to a 56-inch high-def full color television. The riot of color was amazing. None of the representations I saw showed the colors. The sky wasn't black, it was blue-violet. The sun wasn't white, it was a yellow ring around the moon with a burst of what looked like feathery white cirrus clouds (that roiled just enough to freak you out) and then of course, yeah, the moon was black. Blacker than anything I have ever seen. And then when the sun began to peek out again, the "Diamond ring" effect, the diamond was red!

Then of course, you have to put the glasses back on, and you're back to blurry black and yellow. Like being blind after seeing color for 1 minute and 50 seconds.

Just incredible. Loved it. And to think, it happens again in seven years in my vicinity.

Adventure Week

"Too much adventure!" Gary complained. "You scheduled too much for one week."

 Hey, I thought, it's not like that week we saw BNL in Albuquerque and then flew back and drove to Chicago to see Steven Page.

Granted, we did pack a lot into this past week. So much that early in the week that I hit 10,000 steps in one day on my new fitness tracker. It buzzed and lit up. It didn't light up enough to compel me to hit 10,000 any other day, of course. Nice try, Fitbit.

The concert we went to mid-week was almost a washout. There was a torrential rainstorm that hit with straight-line winds and horizontal rain just as I was crossing the bridge. It let up and we went to see:

• A Led Zeppelin tribute band
• Cheap Trick (now with FIVE-necked guitars and a new album)
•  Foreigner

Holy God, why haven't I seen Foreigner live before? We were seated right by the sound boards, and at one point the lead singer ran to the sound pit, strapped himself on top a tiny platform, which then rose into the sky on top of some ... some ... some expand-y phallic thing. And there was fire and blasty jets and all the hits, ALL THE HITS, of the last forty years.

The next night we went to an escape room. We did not escape. We came, really really close - honestly, if we'd just turned over two more documents we'd have been out. Six out of our group of ten bailed, so we had that going against us. The next time I try an escape room, I'll know that if I am to be handcuffed, I won't be handcuffed next to my husband. He berated me so hard while we were trying to get out that the other other two players began giggling nervously.

And it doesn't end! We're off to see some caves this weekend, so we'll be well out of Saint Louis when everyone arrives for the eclipse. In fact, we'll be in the sleepiest town I've ever been in: Cuba, MO.

I promised Gary one day this weekend would be an entire day of sitting and watching TV, just like a normal weekend. He's right! TOO MUCH ADVENTURE!

Another Year Older, Another Year Closer to Retirement

Aging was the theme for the week, beginning Thursday, when I turned 55. I've done everything new there is to do. Time to turn old.

We've been playing with all the aging cliches lately. Every weekend Gary fills his pockets with Werther's candy and we go to the matinee, so, two cliches down right there. We tried another elderly treat: eating at a cafeteria. I was expecting frail old grannies debating between the soups and treating themselves to a half slice of two kinds of cake, like my grandma did. Not today's cafeterias. The people at the Golden Corral would have eaten my grandma if she fit on the plate. No one was frail and old. The were huge and voracious. They were so huge and voracious Gary had a nightmare that night in which he was pursued by fat people.

Gary himself seems to be experimenting with how his old age will look. We had a delightful time last night, driving on new roads, going to a new grocery store, seeing a new act.  Retirement looked good when we were having fun yesterday, but today he pooped out and slept for hours. I tried to nap but I was unable to and we wasted a perfectly beautiful August day. And how often do those come up? Just this morning someone asked me when I was going to retire. It might be conceivable in just three short years. I need to craft a retirement that doesn't bore me silly. One that's full of "newness." 

Another aging cliche popped up at work. We have some Millennials on our team. (They are self-aware millenials, so they joke about their need for participation trophies.) I was complaining that any audio we put in our training would cause problems when we had to edit it, one of he Millennials told me that software has advanced enough to take existing audio and invent new words the person never said. I would have felt shame for my ignorance, only ten minutes later I was able to solve a problem with a 32 year old DOS command. I was pleased. ("DOS! Suck it, Millennial!" I crowed.)

I need to remember how Mom dealt with her retirement. She was fifty. She had some rules:

• No more than three hours of televsion a day.
• Get dressed every day.
• Always have a project to work on. (I still have to learn to knit. That's a project in my back pocket.)
• Have something to look forward to every day.

I should have thought of that advice earlier today. I got dressed: that was the only thing I did right.

In Which I Almost Participate in an Iconic Bit of Americana

Last night when I turned in to the subdivision I notiiced a group of little girls running a lemonade stand. They waved wildly at me and yelled, "LEMONADE."

I didn't stop. I've never even seen a real lemonade stand before. I didn't quite know what to do.

When I got home I hauled Gary out of his chair and got some shoes on him. I got some cash and we headed back to the lemonade stand on foot.

I addressed the entire group of five girls. "How much?"

"FIFTY DOLLARS" one screamed.

I was momentarily taken aback. "No, really, how much?"

Another girl looked at me with pity and chirped, "It's free if you DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY."

"I have money. Do you have some lemonade that is priced somewhere between zero dollars and fifty dollars?"

The girl who tried to shake me down for fifty dollars demanded, "How much money do you have?"

"Three dollars in bills and four dollars in quarters."

Some other girl said, excitedly, "You have to wait until Jessica comes out!" She ran off to get Jessica.

Shakedown Girl yelled, "YOU HAVE TO WAIT." I wasn't going anywhere. It gave me a chance to actually read the sign, which did indeed say LEMONADE, and below that it said "JDRF," for Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Ah, I thought, someone must have handed them a fifty and now that's what the market will bear.

Jessica came out of the house, and she was much older than I anticipated, because she was clearly the Mom.

Jessica pointed out her daughter, a meek girl who had not said much. Jessica said her daughter had Type 1 diabetes and of course I suddenly remembered the twenty dollar bill I had in my purse. I truly had not considered it before, because I didn't think of it as lemonade money. A twenty? That's Starbucks money.

When the twenty was in my hand I tried to hand it to the closest little girl. She was horrified and said YOU HAVE TO GIVE IT TO THE LADY (also known as Jessica, also known as Mom.) Given that the lady took the money and also poured out the lemonade, I felt the little girls were not getting a good education in finance or fund-raising.

That was yesterday. Today at the bank I heard some girls in line behind me talking about the eighty dollars they'd raised for JDRF. "We got a fifty, and a twenty, and two fives." I whirled around. They looked a bit older, and were not screaming or doing cartwheels, but I still asked for details. Turns out they were not my girls, but they had a lemonade stand one subdivision away. I went to the website and while it wasn't JDRF Lemonade day yesterday, that is one way they suggest for raising funds.

So, I still haven't been to a classic lemonade stand. What is the going rate? It's five bucks, right?