Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

How Did I Miss This Part 1: Buckley/Vidal Debates

Twice in the last day I have encountered topics where I thought I knew the salient points, and I did, but somehow the most salient points have escaped me.

First, I sat Gary down and we watched the documentary The Best of Enemies, about the debates between Gore Vidal and Willam F. Buckley. I felt I knew the basic facts: two guys, different opinions, ABC aired the debates during the Chicago Democratic convention. Here’s a summary of what I knew going in:

• Gore Vidal wrote books my father enjoyed.
• Gore Vidal was gay.
• Gore Vidal seemed very full of himself.
• Gore Vidal was on talk shows a lot.

Whereas .. 

• William F. Buckley wrote the National Review, which my father enjoyed.
• William F. Buckley was effete.
• William F. Buckley seemed very full of himself.
• William F. Buckley was on talk shows a lot.

Also, I knew that they were politically opposed.

My intent was to show these debates to Gary so he could see what a polite, civilized discussion of ideas is like, in the hope that it would temper his Facebook tirades.

I did not know the key salient point, and the reason everyone still remembers these debates, which is (SPOILERS IF YOU DON’T ALREADY KNOW) that Gore Vidal on air called William F. Buckley a crypto-Nazi and then William F. Buckley lost his cool and answered, “Now, listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I'll sock you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered.” 

As I say, I had great gaps in my knowledge. More idiocy tomorrow.

Avengers

I’m not a big fan of Marvel movies. Some are charming (first Guardians of the Galaxy), some are  pointless (Ant Man and the Wasp). The worst thing is that I can’t hop up and pee as soon as they’re over: I have to stay for any extended scenes.

I am a big fan of hype and group-think, though, and even though Gary was willing to wait a week after it came out, I got tickets for  the opening weekend of Avengers Endgame. The only pair of tickets available were on Sunday night, starting at quarter till nine pm, ending at quarter till midnight. Evidently kiddos can’t be out on a school night, so two seats were free. Hah! Up yours, kiddos.

Why though? Why was I determined to watch a movie I am not invested in? I can only think that it’s the same reason I watch the World Cups - I don’t care about the game, but if the entire rest of the world is experiencing something, I don’t want to miss out. 

So, being part of the world, that’s half of it, and also I hated the prospect that there was some incredible secret ending that 1.2 billion people would know about, and I wouldn’t know the secret. 

Anyway, as of last night it was 1.2 billion and 2.

Patton Oswalt: Review

We went to see Patton Oswalt, finally, at the Saint Charles Family Arena.

Sigh. I feel like Patton Oswalt personally thinks I am too white, too conservative, too rural.

Why do I think this? Because ....

1. The concert took place in Saint Charles, my extremely white commuter community next to Saint Louis county. He remarked on it a number of times. “Tell me again, am  I in Saint Louis or Saint Charles?” “SAINT CHARLES!” The crowd would roar. “Don’t tell him that,” I thought plaintively. “Saint Louis is so much more open-minded than Saint Charles.”
2. The opener,  Adrienne Apalucci,  was a New York woman who specialized in shock comedy. The two men behind me did not appreciate her abortion / miscarriage / dick jokes. After every joke they would tut, or say “geez,” or “that’s too far.”  No doubt they are currently discussing the people in front of them who guffawed at every tasteless joke. 
3. She led off by pointing out how white the crowd was. I looked around. We were all white. Couldn’t deny it.
4. Patton Oswalt twice went into the crowd and engaged with individuals, which I assume he did to fill in the time lost to the anti-Trump bits he must have edited out on the fly, given the crowd. (“Where’s the topical humor?” I thought, again, plaintively.)
5. So, instead of some good Trump-bashing, I instead heard the details of the life of a rural Washington, Missouri body piercer. Patton asked, “So, do you ever do a piercing like an eyebrow piercing attached to a chain that runs down to a clit piercing and then there are lead Dungeons and Dragons figures hung off the chain?” “We don’t do that,” she replied. “What about those things where people have horns and metal put between their skull and their scalp?”  “There’s not a lot of call for that in Washington, Missouri.” It made me want to get a clit piercing attached by a chain to some metal horns protruding from my scalp.

Best Cheese Ever

Cheese. Chewy creamy cheese. Very tasty for mold. Comes in a variety of textures and flavors.

What is better than cheese? Think about it ... Yes. Fried cheese.

I’m not talking about deep fried cheese. I mean take the raw cheese and fry it up in a skillet. 

You say no? You say, “No, the cheese will melt and burn.”

Sure, Brie would not brown up in a skillet, nor Parmesan, but my new best friend and favorite cheese, Halloumi cheese, was bred like a dog to fry up in golden brown chunks in a pan.

Of course, I have taken it out of its brine to try it. Damn. Now I have to fry it all up and eat it.

Rocks

Here's a little detail of some landscaping I did in my front yard.

I want to curtail the creeping of the Creeping Jenny, so I'm testing to see if it can jump across rocks.

This will make my friends at TeddyJ laugh, because it's an obvious homage to the lovely landscaping at TeddyJ, shown here:

As always, don't be jealous of the rocks that I got.

Bath Face Done

Gary in Bath is as done as it is going to get.

From photo:

... to this:

... then this:

... and I'm stopping at this:

I'm done because it's going backward, and the glasses are all wrong now, and the lenses are two different sizes and yes, it's time for this one to just stop. Not a good experience. Instead of Gary making a humorous face next to a statue with a funny mouth, it's Gary with dead eyes next to a demon in Hell. I could chalk that one up as a study, and try again, but I don't think I will. Portraits are hard, and not satisfying at all.

Shazam

We went to see Shazam last weekend. This isn't about that.

(Well, a little about that (no spoilers):

• Big cuteness points for dealing with how both D.C. and Marvel both have a Captain Marvel.
• I felt there was too much of a personality difference between the superhero and the day-to-day incarnation of the superhero.
• Too many boys - three - in the first half hour. Can't keep that many brunette boys straight. It was like the Thin Man Returns -- in which every man is dark-haired with a thin mustache.)

Anyway, we got to the theater for the 9 a.m. $5 show, which was about half-full. And the screen was dark. "Well that's odd," I thought, "There's usually something on the screen all the time, like movie trivia or interviews or ads or trailers. But, it is 9 in the morning, maybe things are different for the first show."

So, everyone sat and stared at the blank screen. For twenty minutes. You notice certain things when you are in a quiet theater.

• Popcorn is very noisy.
• Candy is very noisy.
• People are very noisy, especially men who were fishing earlier and feel that merited a recap.

Eventually I realized that those things weren't particularly noisy that day, just that they are usually drowned out by the ads and trailers.

Eventually a woman left, came back, and announced to the crowd, "THEY SAY THEY'RE WORKING ON IT."

Everyone in the theater, including me, bellowed "THANK YOU" back.

Ten minutes after that, a man made a foray and came back with a field report: they had called in the person who could fix it. Scattered applause and whooping (fishermen) from the crowd. We were all friends by then.

Ten minutes later, the pre-movie trivia/ interviews / trailers / subliminal advertising roared up and we all clapped.  I realized, "I guess that means we have to sit through a half-hour of this filler and then fifteen minutes of trailers too? Good thing I have nothing else to do today." Almost immediately, a mom hopped up and went out to talk to management. Moms have other things to do.

Management came in soon after, and made a puny effort to raise her voice above the Dolby stereo sound, and said they were sorry about this, we have to watch everything because that's how it's programmed, and here are some free passes for your inconvenience. It was awesome.

We're saving our pass for a 3-D IMAX 7:00 Saturday night show.  I feel like I was in a class-action lawsuit: everyone else did the complaining and I reaped the benefit.

Oh Come ON

When I first played this Mansions of Madness game at work, I didn't like it, because there was a strong fantasy Insanity element. There were various Insanity cards: Paranoia, Schizophrenia, and so on.

That hit just a little too close to home at the time. It would be as if you just got out of jail, then played Monopoly and went directly to Jail.

But, I got over it and learned to like the game. And then today I was dealt this card.

“You feel for a moment as if the strange boils and lesions have taken hold within your brain.”

I mean, really.

Sheets

I was cleaning out my linen closet, and I found the light brown art nouveau patterned sheets that I used on my twin bed the one semester I spent away in college.

I have not used those sheets since 1981. The dorm bed was the last twin I was in until I got the guest room bed, and the old sheets do not match the guest room color scheme. 

What they did match, perfectly, were the wood closet doors in my WPA-built dorm room. And then I bought this Mucha poster, which I still have, and the whole room came together, as they say.

It was a heartless move, but after almost forty years I pitched the dorm room sheets, sad for the loss of my first independent attempt at decorating, and my first attempt at independence. Really, though, who has a sentimental attachment to sheets?

Best Cheese Ever

Cheese. Chewy creamy cheese. Very tasty for mold. Comes in a variety of textures and flavors.

What is better than cheese? Think about it ... Yes. Fried cheese.

I’m not talking about deep fried cheese. I mean take the raw cheese and fry it up in a skillet. 

You say no? You say, “No, the cheese will melt and burn.”

Sure, Brie would not brown up in a skillet, nor Parmesan, but my new best friend and favorite cheese, Halloumi cheese, was bred like a dog to fry up in golden brown chunks in a pan.

Of course, I have taken it out of its brine to try it. Damn. Now I have to fry it all up and eat it.

Snare Drum Revisited

Well, the gynecologist explained the snare drum perpetually playing in my pelvis: benign fasciculations. Everyone's had an eyelid twitch: these are pelvic eyelid twitches.

And like an eyelid twitch, anxiety can set them off. I don't remember any anxiety, but I think my anxiety awareness is defective. Doctors keep telling me I have anxiety. I don't see myself as an anxious person, but perhaps that's because I compare myself with truly anxious people I know.

There's one good thing about having ones pelvis twitch, and it is not what you think. It’s that the prognosis is excellent. After seven years 50% of people polled said it got better, and only four percent said it was worse.

Speaking of the gynecologist, he has been absorbed into our Barnes-Jewish-Christian healthcare monolith. BJC is the biggest employer in Saint Louis, bigger even than Boeing.

In the 1990's Barnes Hospital merged with Jewish Hospital, then they linked up with the two North County Christian Hospitals, forming BJC Healthcare from Barnes Hospital, Jewish Hospital, and Christian Hospital.

I remember how pre-merger, Mom (and perhaps all Saint Louisans) referred to Barnes. When Mom when to Barnes for her back surgery, she referred to it as the Atheist Hospital, because it was not Jewish or Christian.

Electrical Outlets of the Semi-Rich and Almost Famous

In my teens I cleaned for some of the Saint Louis near-rich and near-famous. Not well-off enough to have both a staff and backup staff, but well off enough to hire our team of maids (who arrived in a Cadillac) when the housekeeper took vacation.

For the most part they weren't big names, more like people who had siblings who married into big names. Big enough names that I'm not naming them, for fear of some Saint Louis-style retribution.

All these tangentially influential people had two features in their homes I'd never seen in my middle-class world.

First, they all had carpeting so plush it was exhausting to vacuum. (An added vacuuming indignity: we were required to leave post-vacuum nap marks that were exactly parallel.)

Second, the rooms were large enough to require something I'd never seen elsewhere: electrical outlets engineered into the plush shag carpeting.

It made sense. Say you have a room with a huge bed positioned dramatically dead center, and the room is so large the bed is six feet from any wall. Where do you plug in your reading lamp? If you have one of these houses, the electric outlet is built in to the floor by your bed:

(I take it they never rearrange the furniture, given they'd have to rewire the house.)

Now, no doubt the fancy in-laws of the people I cleaned for had these brass outlets like the one above, with the protective doors. My clients had exposed metal outlets that were embedded 2 inches into the plush carpet, with the electrical fixture exposed to the carpet fibers and any potential bathroom floods.

You would think that you could trip on the tangle of lamp cords that made a nest around the embedded outlet.  We were always instructed to take up any slack by wrapping the cord around the base of the lamp, or humidifier, or whatever.

Since then, even though it was forty years ago, I feel deep middle-class shame when I see my lamp cords swing from tabletop to floor, touch the floor, then (the horror) arc up again to the wall outlet. I have an unreasonable connection between class and cords.

No contact with the floor and the cord! It’s tacky, and it’s dangerous. 

Does that seem rational? No. Still, it is why my tables look like this from above:

and this from below:

It makes me feel that if I can't have a lamp that plugs into the floor, I can at least have a table that plugs directly into the wall.

 

House of Blur

If you ever have even a little bit if anxiety upon leaving your house, I recommend Google Street View.

I was in Google Maps, looking at a street very close to my house, when I noticed this house was blurred.

I got all excited. I remembered that Dick Cheney insisted that Google Maps blur his house, and they did. "Does Dick Cheney live by me?" I wondered.

Since then I have taken great pains to drive slowly past that house every day and peer in to see if Dick Cheney is there, having drinks with Barbra Streisand and enjoying the Streisand Effect.

Leopold and Loeb: The Sequel

I thought I knew everything about the Leopold and Loeb murder case, but then I watched the L&L American Experience episode.

I’ve always assumed that after their conviction they lived out their life sentences in separate prisons, but no. They ended up in the same prison and hung out as buddies. (Or possibly, they continued on as lovers.)

"Well, there's a story," I thought, and started researching.

Here’s what I learned:

They worked in the same area in prison and were allowed to do projects as a team. (Teamwork makes the dream work, whether it’s prison literacy or child murder, I suppose.)

Loeb died ten years in, when he was sliced to death by another prisoner, James Day. Leopold stayed by Loeb’s bedside until he died.

Leopold had to see Loeb’s murderer every day after that, because they were both penned up in the psychiatric ward. Leopold took to screaming into his hands a lot. 

He was eventually paroled after 33 years. He married and lived in Puerto Rico for another 13 years after that, but still had affairs with the ex-con men he sponsored when they got out of prison.

In his post-prison life, the reformed Leopold kept a photo of Loeb in his bedroom, which did not seem to bother Leopold's wife at all.  

She explained it away, saying her husband was “complex.”

This is a pathological level of forgiveness. I suppose she might have said other things, such as, “He’s a different person now,” or, “He only murdered that one child.”

Mueller Report Due Today

I have alerted my company that I need to work at home today. The Mueller report is due.

• If the report exonerates Trump, Gary will be in a state.
• If the report is heavily redacted, Gary will be in a state.
• If the report shows definitively that Trump is guilty, Gary will be in a state.

I anticipate I will need to take about half an hour to listen to the ranting, calm him down, then hold his hand another ten minutes or so. I'll just work an extra forty minutes.

Comet Croissanterie

A few weeks ago, I found a day-old pastry on the break table at work. I ate it, because the diet I have stuck to for three years has been impossible to follow the last few months.

Even a day old it was the best pastry I have ever had. I immediately set out to find where it came from. One department-wide email later I found that it came from Comet Croissanterie and Creamery in Kirkwood. Take a normal pastry and make it more flaky and laminated, and then toast it or deep-fry it or something to make it extra-crispy. I became intent on having another, because this was no normal pastry.

Attempt 1: This place is in Kirkwood, and happily the next Saturday I was in Kirkwood picking someone up from the train station. I was early, and I set off to get to the Croissanterie on foot, but I realized I couldn't get there and back in time for the train.

Attempt 2: The next day, I had all but convinced Gary to go there, but then he balked at going to Kirkwood, 24 miles away.

Attempt 3: The next week I traveled there specifically, and I was three miles away when Siri alerted me they would be closing in two minutes. 48 miles round trip, no pastry.

Attempt 4: I looked up the closing hours (noon!), and got there at about 11:30. I walked up to the door! Victorious! Croissants would be mine! No! Door does not open! Door has this sign!

"Or until sold out." I suppose they've been selling out often enough they officially close an hour earlier and then sometimes even earlier than that. Another 48 miles wasted.

Attempt 5: The next day, Sunday, I was up at 6:45, dressed, ready to go, and Gary wheedled, "I can go with you if you wait." I gave him half an hour, and he was up and moving in time. So, 96 miles into this endeavor, I decided to given it another 48 and drive there one more time.

And they were there! And open! And we got one of everything:

(Not pictured: a breakfast sandwich and half of the work pastry, which ended up being an Almond Bear Claw, only served on weekends, which was a "croissant wrapped around homemade sweet almond paste." And deep fried or something, I don't know, it was heavenly. Also shown: some kind of off-the menu muffin, a croissant, a pain au chocolate, and a strawberry-rhubarb turnover.)

Two things on the web menu were not there: the cinnamon rolls and the biscuits and gravy, which astonishingly did not sell well. I would think if one were decadent enough to frequent a pastry shop, one would not draw the line at biscuits and gravy.

Perhaps because it was lamb gravy? Now I really want biscuits and lamb gravy.

Notre Dame and My Poor Google Skills

I was at work, mourning Notre Dame, and a friend consoled me by saying:

“All the wood and stained glass? It’s not that old. It’s only 100 years old, because Notre Dame, the inside? It was all shelled during World War I. They were these long guns the enemy hauled with a train, and they shelled the cathedral. But they rebuilt it all in 100 years. They’ll just do it again.”

“Why, that makes me feel just a little bit better,” I said. I can get over the loss of a 100 year old pew much more quickly than a 700 year old pew.

It made me feel so much better, that I tried to find more information about the WWI shelling of Notre Dame, especially after Rachel Maddow referenced it in her show.

I found two things:

• In the Wikipedia entry on the Paris Gun:

 A parody of the Paris Gun appears in the Charlie Chaplin movie The Great Dictator. Firing at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the "Tomanians" (the fictional country that represented Germany) succeed in blowing up a small outhouse.

“Did my friend watch The Great Dictator and remember that scene?” I wondered. “It is the very first scene.” You can watch it here.  Notre Dame does not make an appearance, but it is mentioned.

• There was a Notre Dame in Reims, France that was destroyed in WWI, and it certainly did resemble the one in Paris. Here it is mid-shelling.

I was feeling almost chipper after I found out that - with the exception of the northern rose window - the stained glass was all new as of 1965. But then, I looked through my own photos.

What has happened to these angels?

=====================

Update: Apostles, not angels, and they were beheaded and packed up well before the fire.

... and my friend did indeed confuse the Reims Notre Dame with the Paris Notre Dame.

Car Key

Last Wednesday I dawdled away my last fifteen minutes at work: went to the bathroom, checked in with friends, divvied up my hours worked and tracked them in the computer system. This is my daily Farewell To Work Dance. The last dance step is snagging my car key - and - I couldn't find it.

I assumed I had just done the car key snag early, so I retraced my steps: I checked my pockets, bathroom stall, friends, laptop bag - no key.

I had to assume I had dropped it in the parking garage that morning. And a Mini key lying next to a Mini car - who could resist that temptation? (Besides Gary - one time we were in a closed used-car lot and found a car key on the ground that did indeed open a nearby car.  We just sat in the car for a bit, and then returned the key through the service department drop-slot with a note that said the car cornered well.)

Since I imagined someone finding the key by the car then driving merrily away, my anxiety immediately bought a new car (fully electric). I didn't mourn the Mini for a minute. But before I contacted the authorities, or even went out to the parking garage to see the burnt rubber and tread marks leading away from my empty spot, I retraced all my steps from when I hit the building at nine in the morning.

I rounded the corner by the first room I'd been in that day and shouted, "OH. THANK. GOD." Because there was my car key, sitting calmly in the middle of the table. Electric car fantasies went dark when I saw my familiar key fob.

A friend within earshot called out, "Was that your car key?" 

I staggered out of the room, "IT HAS BEEN IN HERE SINCE NINE IN THE MORNING!" I said, aghast.

He replied, "Yeah, we wondered whose key it was."

I covered my car key with kisses and I've kept a close eye on it since.

 

Punishment

Recently, Gary was late to an appointment with someone who had annoyed him. He said, "He doesn't realize it, but I'm punishing him by being late. He'll never know that he annoyed me."

I asked, "Isn't that kind of passive-aggressive?"

He answered, "No. It gives me satisfaction," which was no answer at all.

I thought a moment. "So all those nights when you came home late from work, were you punishing me for something?"

"No. I really had to work, which, I don't know why, was important at the time." He paused. "That wasn't a punishment."

The way he stressed "That" made me continue to press. "Porn? Do you look at porn? Is that my punishment? Are you having affairs? Sleeping all day? Is that why you don't throw away the stick from the ice cream bar, you just leave it on the table?"

"Yes!" he laughed, "That IS one of the ways I punish you."

"What am I being punished for? What have I done?"

"I will never tell you."

"But that means I can never stop. How will I learn?"

"It is not about you learning. It is about me getting ... satisfaction."

Truly, it was a horrifying conversation.

The next day, I went to put on deodorant and noticed that a lot of the gel deodorant had been extruded from the container, and was just there lying on the applicator, as if some strong-handed husband had decided to just squeeze the gel out by brute force instead of patiently spinning the little dial to extrude just the right amount of gel. 

“I know what this is!” I thought. “This is a Punishment.”

When I confronted him later he claimed it was not a punishment, and that frankly he had seen the same glop and had assumed I had done it and I was punishing him.

I would have thought that the man was gaslighting me, but then it occurred to me that the latest Bomb Cyclone is probably to blame. I could see the reduced air pressure acting on gel deodorant. 

I continue to be punished, though, just not by means of the deodorant. Every day he leaves one of those ice cream bar sticks on the table. I must really be fucking up somehow.

Hoarder

The deer turned their noses up at the apples in the manger.  They chose instead to eat the woody debris from the Black-eyed Susans. Gary did some research and reported that deers’ bellies are seasonal, and they can die if they eat something in winter that they would usually eat in summer. Were I a deer, I would die from this. 

Gary is now using the manger to hold peanuts in the shell. He still throws shelled peanuts on the ground, but he thought some of the raccoons might like a challenge. 

After a few days, some smaller raccoons investigated the manger but ignored the nuts. This went on for weeks, until this guy showed up. The raccoon in the video below performed that same move over and over and over and - I would say thirty times in one night, he walked up to the manger, got one peanut in the shell, and left with it. The next night, same thing.

 

We thought at first he was the Meals On Wheels service for invalid or overweight raccoons. But Gary chatted with the man at the feed store, and it appears that peanuts in the shell are popular with Wildlife Dads who need to go on food runs for the New Moms who are stuck in the den. 

Why are nuts in the shell popular? You get two nuts for one run. Also, the discarded shell is a good nesting material. 

The math adds up - babies stay in the den with Mom for six weeks, and historically the babies arrive early June. 

Gary thinks all the wildlife whimpering earlier that week (when the raccoon jumped the fence to see the uproar) was a Mom giving birth outside the den. I suppose early births can happen in Raccoon World as easily as anywhere else. I’ve never thought of it, but since there are no Raccoon Epidurals, birth would probably cause some whimpering.

Neuro Visit

There are two things I didn't mention about my recent neurologist visit.

First, he told me there is some upstart new MS drug that is very similar to my current drug, but with fewer side effects. Namely: if you find yourself with an urgent need for a fully-functioning immune system, you'd be better off with this new drug.

I find myself irrationally loyal to my drug, since I was in the clinical trial. (If you use Gilenya, look at the side effects and find "Weight gain." I put that there.) I told the doctor I would stick to my current drug, thank you, given that it is still working so well for me.

That leads to the second thing, which happened when he pulled up my MRI. I was prepared for The Counting of the Lesions, which you know delights me, especially since I seem to have fewer lesions now. Seven years ago it was fifty, last time it was 35 or so.

This time, he did a side-by-side comparison of my two most recent MRIs, the better to show how my disease has not progressed. In the midst of pointing out that I had no new lesions, he said, "And you have this shadow on your cerebellum, but you had that last year too. See here?" And I saw that oh, a third of my left cerebellum was paler than the rest, on both MRIs.

"Oh, I see," I said. I nodded.

About eight hours later I said, "Wait. What now?"

Perhaps it took me eight hours to react because it took that long to remember that the cerebellum is a vital part of my brain (and I remember that from junior high because it almost has "Ellen" in its name). Not as vital as my brain stem, which still looks pretty good. Perhaps I was unperturbed  because the shadow was there for two MRIs and the person who typed up the MRI report didn't comment on it either time. Or maybe I don't know what a brain shadow is. I'd be concerned if I had a big fat lesion taking up a third of my left cerebellum. A shadow? Who knows what that is. It's odd they call it a shadow, since it's paler, but I suppose MRIs are like a photographic negative.

After a few minutes of mulling if I should be upset about this news I ran it past Gary, and as soon as he said, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVE A BRAIN SHADOW" I realized why I wasn't more concerned. If I had a normal brain I'd be dismayed, but I've got what amounts to a brain full of 30 plus pimples and I've been told I have a rash. More of the same.

So I'm cool now, I just have a little shade on my lizard brain.  I am at the point that I keep singing, "I'm being followed by a brain shadow, brain shadow brain shadow. Leaping and hopping on a brain shadow."

Improvement: Interior

Someday I will have to update the interior of the house. The house is like me: even if I exercised and lost weight I would still be old and unattractive. Even if tried to update my house -- paint over the stenciling, remove the Waverly wallpaper -- it will still be an eighties house with a kitchen visible from the great room / beamed ceiling / fireplace. It would be like trying to update a house with a sunken living room: you’d always expect Mary Tyler Moore to wave at you through the kitchen pass-through.

Some maintenance needs to be done on the inside. In particular, I want another Toto toilet, so enamored am I of the first one. I am crushed every time Gary hogs our one Toto toilet and I have to do my business on the original crappy crapper. So low to the ground. Such tardy flushing. I barely feel human using it.

That does mean an update to our time capsule master bathroom - virginal and untouched this 30 years. Never been painted. Builder toilet and lighting and tile. I confess that a little bit of me feels that the whole house will collapse if we pull that thread.

 

 

Improvement: Backyard

In addition to the impending improvements in the side yard, the backyard needs so much work I cannot even begin to think about it. I only know one thing: the patio has dropped six inches and that is exposing the dining room subfloor to the elements.

 That's the only known thing. The rest of the backyard is up for grabs.

• It needs a raccoon feeding station and play area.
• It needs a raccoon highway so no one needs to jump the fence when there's a raccoon in crisis.

 

• If I decide to get rid of the trumpet vine (the official weed of Missouri), the vine bed needs to be encased in concrete. Only way to defeat a trumpet vine.
• It needs a cactus garden in the back corner where the sprinkler doesn't quite reach, where last year I planted sedum that the rabbits ate in a day.
• It needs a special shrine where I can house the parental ashes that are currently under the brass sundial. Ask me where the brass sundial is. I don't know: it has been overgrown by Lamb's Ears the past five years.

Improvement: Side Yard

We are staying close to home again this vacation season, so that means we will again invest in home improvements instead of memories. The driveway absolutely needs to be resurfaced or replaced, and if I put in a large, slow-growing evergreen, a mugo pine perhaps, the front bed will be done.

The side yard and back yard also need to be attended to. I am at a loss on the side yard. We've had a side yard like our neighbors: a bed extending a few feet from the side of our house, only ours had the added attraction of a rotting wood border. 

I have been looking at a lot of Pinterest images of side yards. I do not need a spectacular side yard: just a place to keep peonies and flowering plants and one evergreen to cover up the spot where the hail dinged the siding. 

I want something between this, which everyone has:

and this Pinterest extravaganza:

Cleaning Regimen

My cleaning regimen is that I clean when people are coming over. There was a brief episode last week when we thought the tax preparer was coming by and I hurriedly cleaned the public spaces: the guest bathroom and the great room. 

However, yesterday I was in the non-guest bathroom, shaving my feet, as I do, and I was too enthusiastic with my pedicure and a bit of blood got on the floor. Wiping up the bit of blood set off a domino effect and half an hour later the bathroom was spotless. 

When Gary noticed the cleaning noises had stopped, he appeared in the bathroom doorway and asked. “Why are you cleaning? Is someone coming over?”

Mick Jagger

Mick Jagger thanked the staff at the hospital following his emergency heart valve replacement. I suspect this was Mick’s first time in the hospital. He seems very healthy for an old man. In fact, all The Rolling Stones seem oddly healthy. When I imagine myself in a rock band (and you know I do), I get as far as imagining the bathroom facilities on the tour bus private jet (my imaginary rock band: very successful) and it all falls apart. Do they make private jets that have a bathroom for every member of the band? I don’t think they do. 

I believe I have been to the doctor more in the past month than Mick Jagger has in his entire life. One visit to the GP was canceled, but the neurologist visit begat an OB-GYN visit and an extra blood test in two weeks.

I understand that Mick devotes much of his time to a very intense training regimen. The neurologist pointed out my lack of exercise as just one example of my non-compliance to doctor’s orders. It’s just hard to spend a half hour a day when there is no result. No muscle gain,  no fat loss, even after three months of it. I suppose Mick is the result of fifty years of it.

Killer Software

This Boeing air disaster story is just a nightmare. Now it seems that Boeing was warned about the software problems four days before the most recent crash.

I feel like I dodged a bullet. Boeing (nee McDonnell-Douglas) is one of the biggest employers in Saint Louis. I don't work for Boeing, but I do write software. Happily, I don't write aviation software. When my software fails, people have to ask questions instead of looking something up in a database. No one dies.

I cannot even imagine what those Boeing software developers are going through. There must be William Mulholland levels of guilt.

 

Banana Hanger

Gary brought home a kitchen banana hanger. He hasn't had a banana for months, but he explained, "IT HAD A MONKEY ON IT," so what can you do?

He also brought home bananas, so I embraced the banana hanger, if it gets him to eat bananas.

But then, what happens when the bananas are gone? If you are Gary, you hang a monster from the Mansions of Madness game on the banana hanger.

I had to counter. We have lots of monkeys aound here, since that was Gary's nickname in his youth.

Sweater

I spied a young thin woman at work wearing a very eye-catching asymmetrical sweater. It had ME written all over it. (Or rather, unabridged, it had LOOK AT ME written all over it. The fringe, the asymmetry, the cowl neck were all designed to grab attention.)

I complimented her, and immediately stalked that sweater online. In a few hours I had found it, surprisingly in my size, in China, and I purchased for $13. I did not feel good about it.

I suspected I would never see my $13 or the sweater, and I got the email the next day saying they couldn't fill the order. Surprisingly, a few days later, I got my $13 back.

For a few days after that the sweater became my Idée Fixe. By the end of the week I had plans to buy it in a smaller size, locally sourced, then take it apart, make a larger pattern, reverse-engineer it out of t-shirt material, fringe the t-shirt material, and then add BEADS, yes thread BEADS through the fringe YES BEEADSSSS, and thankfully Amazon intervened and said, "Recommended for you!" They recommended The Sweater, from another source, and in my size. There it was. Well, still in China, that's where it was specifically, but eventually it was mine.

Strangely, the first day I wore it no one even looked at me, but a week later I tried again and three friends and a stranger complimented my new sweater. I suppose my air of "Screw you guys, I LIKE this sweater" helped me carry it off the second time around.

Trivia: Bad

What was bad about 90's trivia?

Two words: Free. Beer. That may sound great, in general, but free beer served to competitive people? Bound to get rowdy.  In fact I did see two adult men in superhero costumes literally swatting each other, and it seemed all in fun, but one foul slap and it's kindling for the eventual melee.

The rowdy crowd was packed in a church basement. (As an aside, as a former Southern Baptist (feel free to laugh), it's always odd to see beer served at church (second only to wine on the altar).)  Church basements aren't known for their acoustics, so we in the back of the hall couldn't hear anything. No problem, we said, the questions are on a projector. The projector was set a smidge too low for the people mid-hall, so they stood up to see it, so back of the hall really couldn't see it, and while blocking the crowd by standing up may fly at a concert, it really doesn't fly at trivia. The hall was divided against itself all night.

But I addressed the real problem to my table during round six of ten. "Trivia's no fun when you aren't winning!" We have aged out of 90's trivia. We failed so badly on round 1 that we were in 16th place out of 50 tables. We were 28th out of 50 at the penultimate round. Unthinkable!  I don't know where we ended up, because Ann and I left the lost cause early to beat the exit traffic (free beer).

Trivia: Good

The usual team of friends went to a ‘90’s trivia match.

Costume: (If you don’t know, Saint Louis trivia matches expect you to dress up in harmony with the trivia theme.) I intended to go as Madonna, I still have my costume saved from back in the days when Madonna and her yearly metamorphosis made for an easy Halloween costume. When I found that the cone bra, a vital part of the Madonna costume, would have only fit now if I entirely removed my own breasts, I put on my Late Night With David Letterman sweatshirt instead. Oddly, I still kept the cone bra. I suppose I could tailor it later if I attend a trivia match where the theme is Fat Celebrities.

Food: (If you don’t know, you bring food for you table at Saint Louis trivia matches. It does not need to be themed.) Bindu brought samosa and strawberry wine, which were delightful apart but did not pair well together. Anne brought excellent wings from Lester’s. Since half the table is in the Keto diet, I felt I had to bring a high and a low-carb offering.

Carbs: flavored popcorns (cheesy, chocolate toffee, salted caramel, and grape). The grape popcorn was vile, but the others were very good. 

Keto: Friend 0.5 is a cheese expert and her favorite cheese is Midnight Moon, so with such a solid recommendation I had to try that. It was well received by the Keto people.

Mulligans: (If you don't know, well, then you have never played golf. A mulligan in trivia is a sticker you can put in place of a blank answer once per round, and it counts as correct). When flummoxed as to what the correct answer is, people tend to give the "answer" using mulligan syntax. Which president threw out the most first baseball pitches? President Mulligan. Highest peak in the Hawaiian islands? Mauna Mulligan. 90’s actress? I said Carey Mulligan, but she was a 2000s actress.

The best answer for "Name the song and the 90's band" was "Mulligan" by Mulligan and the Mulligans.

So, the company and the food and the mulligans were all good.

Tomorrow: the rest.

April 1

Today is April Fool’s Day. Trust no one.

I feel a bit that the Internet has ruined April Fool's day. Before the internet, if NPR would tuck a facetious story in with the rest of Morning Edition, it was delightful. It was a special treat you only got on one day of the year, and there wasn't much chance anyone else you knew was listening at the same time. You'd never hear it again, either, God knows if you missed something on the radio it was in the ether on its way to the cosmos.

Now, various sites have recaps of all the corporate April Fool's jokes, and you can access them all day. It's just not the same.