Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Weekly Paint Progress 10/31

This week,the gourds:

Went from this:

To this:

So, about half done. I only spent an hour on it. Of course, it all needs to be a lot more vibrant. More orange, and then if that doesn't work then the opaque orange instead of the transparent.

The bad thing about that is that I mixed up two hours worth of paint and I only painted an hour.

I am sure every oil painter tries what I tried next: covering the pallette with Saran Wrap.  

iPhone Annoyances

I have had this conversation at work at least ten times in the last month.

"Ellen, your phone is breaking up. I can't hear you / you sound like you're underwater / it's all garbled / what are you saying?"

I then yell into the phone, "IS THIS BETTER?" and the people claim it is, but they're likely frightened by my annoyed tone.

The Apple Genius Bar ran diagnostics and found nothing.

Gary, the hero, found the answer. Evidently, if your phone says it is using 5GE cellular, that is a lie. In 5GE, the “E” stands for “Ersatz”.  Evidently this imaginary 5G (that doesn’t exist in the U.S. yet, you lying marketing bastards) is worse than 4G. Garbled, twisted, underwater calls. 

If I see 5GE at the top of my phone now, I just send an email.

Review: Zombieland Double Tap

We almost didn’t go see ZombieLand Double Tap, the sequel to the delightful ZombieLand. Gary read some poor reviews. The general complaint was that it was just the original ZombieLand repackaged.

I said I liked the original, what I remember from ten years ago, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it repackaged.

And it was just delightful! Just like the original. (I think there may even be a nod to that when you meet the Albuquerque and Flagstaff characters.)

So, if you liked the original, go see ZombieLand Double Tap; if you didn’t like the original, what didn’t you like? Was it the gore and violence? Oh, yeah, then do not see the sequel. It’s just as gory.

So, now we’ve seen our four movies for five bucks each: Ad Astra, Downton Abbey, Judy, ZombieLand Double Tap. Pretty good deal. (I’m not considering the fifteen dollar soda or all the two meals out as part of the value equation.) So, we bought another set of movies, since the trailers roped us in to wanting to see Jojo and Motherless Brooklyn. Could we have watched these movies at home? Probably, except for Ad Astra. But I like going on dates with my grumpy husband.

Soda at the Movies

Gary is loyal. Some might call it “stubborn and set in his ways,” but I call it loyal. For example, he has a favorite movie theater. There’s nothing great or special about this theater. The only thing I like about it is that they finally repainted it a grown-up maroon, instead of the carnival of purple / yellow / purple and yellow paint jobs it has had over the last 30 years.

Inside the theater, he has a favorite screen, and it is the Bistro screen, where you can order food and drinks. He never orders there, but for some reason he likes it best.

This last time we went to the theater, a staffer saw Gary in line for a soda and said to me,  “You guys are going to the Bistro screen, right? He should order the soda there.”

”Oh, he doesn’t like to do that.”

”It’s cheaper ordering it in there.”

”Doesn’t matter to him.’’

The guy confessed. “You’re required to order something now if you’re in the Bistro theater. It’s a new rule.”

”Oh, then I’ll let him know.” And I thought, “He won’t like this at all.”

Gary grumbled as I told him, but then he sighed loudly and agreed. He tried to order the soda at the entrance from the hostess, but she insisted we go ahead to our seats and use the call button.

We sat down, hit the call button, and then Gary asked me if I had any singles, since all he had were fives and tens. Why? Because we had to tip the woman when she brought the soda.

”No, I don't, but you don’t have to ... oh, never mind, of course you do. Use your card?”

”I’m not doing that. This is awful. I hate this.”

And it was awful. He handed her a five, said “keep the change,” then she came back and said it was $5.13. So he handed her a ten, and said “Keep the change,” because speaking of change, he cannot. He growled, “I hate this. We can never use the Bistro screen again.” He then offered me a sip of his soda. “Wanna try this? It’s a fifteen dollar soda.”

Pie

Well, I made the People Pot Pie. As usual, I was too ambitious, so it was a bitter disappointment to me but was a wonder to everyone else.

First off, it's modeled after my face. I wanted my distinctive bumpy nose, but I didn’t want a Mr. PotatoHead nose just plugged into my face, and Friend Anne had the brilliant idea to carve an apple and use it to support the nose shape. Of course, draping the pastry over the nose apple added 1/4 inch of bulk all around, and then the baking made it go bulbous on me, so the resemblance went south.

Still, it looked creepy and human, at least. Here's the plain pie (caramel apple filling, if you are curious):

Here it is with some decoration (cherry pie filling and cocoa powder, and apple bits for teeth,  if you are curious):

And finally, here it is with eyeballs (Lindor White Chocolate truffles with cocoa powder, if you are curious):

Three times, people said, “Ellen, your pie looks delicious!”

“Delicious, you say? Have you seen the pie?”

”Yes, it looks so tasty. I can’t wait to try it.”

Then they each actually looked closely at the pie and revised their earlier statements.

I brought it in at eight a.m., no one cut into it until ten, but then it was gone by one. Good reviews. (God bless America’s Test Kitchen for a reliable pie crust recipe.)

Science Woman Moisturizes: the Results

Okay - the control is on the left. The right side is after seven days of smearing some Lancome lard on half my face. And neck. My right, your left. Doesn't matter. There is no difference.

I confess, I am very skeptical about before and after photos, especially ones where the lighting is different. I am much more forgiving now that I know that even in a controlled environment it is hard to get the lighting the same.

On the plus side, I think I'm plenty moist, and now I have all the money that other people spend on moisturizer.

What can be done, though? Toner? Cheery thoughts? Age with grace?

 

 

Big Box O' Jerry Part Four: The Miscellany

The Starter Family

I was flat-out astonished to see my name in the obit and funeral program as "survived by." I mean, they had to acknowledge my brother Dave, because Dave was the only one there when Jerry actually died. (He famously gave away Jerry's eyeballs post-death: the poor nurse took the word of his "son" that that's what Jerry would have wanted.) However, I'm pretty sure Jerry's friends looked at the obit and said, "Wait, there's another one?"

The Seeds

I don't know why, but the box-in-a-box filled with mementos from Jerry's funeral is also full of grass seed. I hope this isn't some Oklahoma tradition, because that seed is all in my Dustbuster now.

The Novel

The novel is a 5 inch high stack of papers, all numbered, all out of order. Three different typewriters. Gary suggested we take it to an optical scanner, only I think it will be enough of a chore just to sort the pages. Besides, I know Dave said he kept a copy, so it's possible someone else already did that. I glanced at one page and there was some spicy dialog; that's all I know so far. The prospect of sorting the pages is daunting.

Weekly Paint Progress 10/24

We interrupt the Big Box O' Jerry for the Thursday Weekly Paint Progress, because if I don't hold myself to this I will not progress.

Here's the subject.

I'm indeed scaling it down. No ambition for this one, not trying anything new. I'm not even devoting a canvas to this, just canvas-covered board. It already bothers me that the proportions aren't right.

I hope it's going to be alla prima, done in a day, that's why I'm going to mix all the paints before I start.

 

Big Box O’ Jerry Part Three: The Photos

Family #2 Photos

Jerry had a boy and a girl with his second wife, Suzanne. As is always the way in "our" family, there are countless photos of the boy child and almost none of the girl. Then again, I suppose my half-sister Julia took her photos with her when she left, but I do wonder why she left her confirmation photos behind. Those photos made me realize how inaccurate my memories of my stepmother are. I remember her as an icy glamorous blonde, and it seems from the photos she was a very pretty perky brunette.

Negatives

There are more negatives than there are prints, which means I have some time ahead of me scanning the negatives and sending them to Photoshop to invert. (And then, saying, "Who are these people?")

There is a another very interesting, three by five inch negative. It's glass, and it was in an envelope from a photo studio in Rome.

I don't need Photoshop to see that's a page from Mom and Jerry's wedding photo album. The holes on the side show plainly show that they sent the page to Rome, and then got this negative plate in return (and the page back, I believe). But why? I know they didn't have any negatives in the album. Perhaps they wanted a negative so they could blow it up? For blackmail? Why?

Me

I was very taken aback to see my eighth-grade photo in there, especially given that I was in my twenties when David found Jerry. Gary said, "Well, obviously, your Mom sent it to him," and I laughed to think Mom would have communicated with Jerry on the sly. Regrettably, eighth grade was the worst of all of my school photos.

(I am sure Jerry thought, "This child looks nothing like me!")

It also has my signature on the back and a drawing I made of a "man eating bagel." (Oh! I just got that. It’s not a man eating a bagel, it’s a bagel with fangs. Subtle humor.)

I imagine that David had that photo on hand when he encountered Jerry. He claims not to. Perhaps Mom sent it along with a snippy note? It shall remain a mystery.

Big Box O' Jerry Part Two: The Crowder Letters

Last Letter to Jerry

The most poignant letter was probably from a doctor Jerry saw in early May, 1987.  It has some very direct quotes, like, "...more than one person who saw you in the clinic felt that they could smell alcohol in your presence. You continuing to drink is a sure way to commit suicide, and will buy you plenty of misery, I can guarantee you." He offers alcoholism counseling and wants to see Jerry again in two weeks to check liver and potassium levels. It's dated May 7, postmarked May 9th, and Jerry died May 11.

The Crowder Letters to Jerry's Mother

Now I know that in the eighties you could send a letter to "The Lockett Family, Crowder, Oklahoma" and as long as it had a stamp on it it would be delivered. Several people did that after Jerry died.

One letter was from the warden of the prison Jerry broke into in pursuit of his Pulitzer. It said, essentially, "I respect this man as a journalist, but I am not surprised he's dead." There was a politician that said the same to the newspaper for the full-length obit. Evidently Jerry was a professional, very direct, and he got the story very fast. (No doubt because work was interfering with his drinking. The alcoholism amazes me. He never drank when he was with Mom. Then again, a lot of mental illness strikes in the early thirties; I suppose alcoholism could too.)

A counter to the damning letter from the doctor came in the form of construction-paper cards made by a grade-school class. The teacher’s note said that after the Challenger disaster, Jerry used his NASA connections to find where this class could send condolence cards. And now, here they were sending condolence cards to his mother after his death. Kind of a morbid cast to this teacher's lesson plans.

There's a letter applauding Jerry for his participation in the "Coalition of of Concerned Citizens." Uh-oh, I thought, that can't be good. Gotta find out who these people hate. Not to worry, Big Dot, it isn't the New Zealand group, unless they had a branch in a tiny Oklahoma town. But based on every CCC I've Googled, they hated someone.

And of course, there are a lot of sympathy cards to my grandmother, and interestingly many of them just say,"We love you." I would never think of putting that on a condolence card, but I suppose when a mother loses a child that's the best thing to say.

Big Box O’ Jerry Part One: The Italian Notes

The standoffish period lasted two hours, if you are wondering.

Unlike Mom, Jerry kept no love letters for children to discover after his death -- or if he did his mother disposed of them.

There is some other interesting correspondence, though.

The Italian Notes

There are three tiny notes in Italian on some tiny intricate notepaper involving a cellophane piece printed with  ... oh, I can't describe it. Here's a photo:

The three notes are in bad cursive so my attempts to run them through Google translate resulted in only, "Happy new year ... American friend ... our daughter ... baby chickens ... Sincerely, Caterina." The only girl in the Vespa photo that would be Jerry's age would be the one on the left. I don't know, there was a girlfriend from when he went to high school in Saudi Arabia, perhaps Caterina is the same. But for God's sake, the man was enough of a mystery to me already, now I have Italian cursive on top of it?

Big Box O’ Jerry

As you may recall, my brother recently mailed me a box of our father’s ephemera. I opened up the box of Jerry's files, and the first thing I saw was a photo of my brother and I. So cute. Who would abandon those cuties?

Our photo is sitting next to folders of medical records for Jerry's other son, the severely autistic one. If I were a good, well-balanced, emotionally mature person, one who had moved on, I would feel sad for Jerry. After all, after throwing away two perfectly good children, he had one who (in my imagination) didn't give him any of the hugs we could have given him.

But I am not that person. And, oddly, I am not tying into this box of relics the way I expected. Maybe just one more night of being as stand-offish to Jerry as I can. I will get to you later, box, when it suits me.

Science Girl Moisturizes

So I said to the Lancome saleswoman when she popped the 7-day moisturizer samples in my bag, "You know I'm going to put this on half my face for seven days and see if it makes a difference."

"Do it!" she challenged me.

This is Day 1. I’m following the rules and using the Day 1 packet on Day 1, just in case they fill the Day 1 packet with extra-strong Crisco. (I hate moisturizing: it always feels like I’m slathering on Crisco.)

This is my face utterly bare and unmoisturized. (I also have a high-def full size copy for research, which is even more frightening.) I don’t know why I look so worried. (It’s not the polyp, which is small.)

I'm moisturizing my right side of my face and my neck (Jesus!). Check back in seven days from now and marvel at either the restorative powers of moisturizer or at the wonder of the scientific method.

Gary and Reality

Yesterday Gary dreamed he was a spy being beaten in a North Korean prison. I said, “Oh, you had the radio on,” because I imagined NPR could easily infiltrate his subconscious with some expose of Korean work camps.

”I don’t listen to the radio anymore,” he said huffily, and then I realized that any alarm would come from Alexa and not the radio, and then I realized, “Alarm? Why would a retired man need an alarm?” So unless the Alexa is bored and lonely and begins whispering Prison Camp Facts to him if he isn’t awake by eleven a.m., I can’t see what prompted this dream.

I wasn’t worried at first (sleeping man has dreams, whoa), but then Gary told me that it took him a long time to ge back to reality. According to him, he had to strip down and stand in front of the bathroom mirror for a hour before he concluded he had not been beaten (and, assumably, was not North Korean).

I think everyone’s had the dream that stuck with them all day — some friend betrays you in a dream and you can’t get past it until lunch — but this seems like an advanced case.

He thinks these new hyper-realistic dreams are a result of the medications he’s taking for his thyroid, migraine, and epilepsy. I hope so. I don’t want to have to mount one of those nursing-home signs on his bedroom wall: 

“The day is SATURDAY, Your name is GARY, Your nurse is ELLEN, You are in the UNITED STATES.”

No, Really, My Gallbladder is Fine

Recently I have had a perfect storm of predictive gallbladder symptoms: weight loss, high liver numbers, stabby little back pains. It’s understandable that I’d be sent to have my gallbladder checked out.

My gallbladder never gave me a moment’s trouble before. I expected that the ultrasound technician would reel in amazement when faced with the dazzling perfection of my gallbladder. Gary’s gallbladder famously exploded in San Francisco, my brother lost his gallbladder, my great-grandmother died because she took too much aspirin during a gallbladder attack. Happily, my gallbladder is a precise machine that dispenses exactly the required amount of gall.

Yesterday morning I got an ultrasound of my gallbladder and all of the adjacent guts. Guts are fine. Gallbladder functions like a dream. There are no stones.

There is, however, a polyp.  The office called me at work to tell me about it, but I can't recall what size they said it was. If they said 5 millimeters, then it is small. If they said 5 centimeters then it is large.

What I do know for sure is that I felt fine at work before I heard the word "polyp" -- but after that, boy, I went on a decline. My belly swelled up, my back hurt, I practically walked around doubled over and eventually I just took half a sick day. Just from hearing the word polyp! Such a baby.

Weekly Paint Progress 10/17

Okay, I guess this is the end of the line for Gary and the Stone Face. I've never framed an oil painting before.

I think the next painting will be decorative gourds and fruit, because no one will know if the gourds are proprtionate, much less if I have captured the character of the gourd.

I Must Make This Pie

This showed up in my Facebook feed last week.

Here is the article. It explains that the pies above are made of latex, but the article gives tips on how to make them out of actual pie, as does this one.  I'm making at least one before Halloween. I'll leave it in the break room.

Karaoke Party

My last mention of my work husband Tim was back in 2011, when I moaned that he was leaving TeddyJ for another job. Well evidently, you never can truly leave TeddyJ, because he returned to the fold last year. He's in a building across town, so I don't see him as often as I like.

Tim has that a lovely quality that makes you feel like you are the most fascinating person in the room. That quality makes Tim an excellent host. (I know Mom said that Gary had that quality too, props given, though right now I feel Gary finds Rachel Maddow the most interesting person in our room. ("Sh! I'm listening to this!"))

When Tim invited us to his karaoke party, I thought, "How can I get Gary to go to this party? He loves karaoke." Surprisingly, Gary was up for the party and for singing in public. We were up on stage singing his showstopper, Everybody Loves a Lover. Well he sang; I kind of chanted in an atonal fashion. But, I made up for my poor singing by SELLING that song.

The party rekindled Gary's interest in the karaoke, though the machine that we used to run the software has long since died. But I sense a return to Garyoke. That way, if we are invited back to Tim's annual party, I can practice beforehand.

The Buffet

There's a forty-year-old tree in front of our house.  The limbs scrape the roof of my car when I back out of the garage. We haven’t bothered to prune it the last few years. 

I began to notice a few twigs were down. Then the next week I happened to notice the driveway was littered with twigs. And not individual twigs, more like the last six inches of foliage off everything. Like someone had just randomly attacked the tree with hedge clippers. Snip snip snip.

Or, chew , chew, chew. A few weeks later the lawn guy told Gary that deer were eating our trees and bushes.

”Cool!” Gary said.

”Deer can really damage your landscaping.”

”We love deer!”

I was not there to say, “I am not buying new shrubs to please the deer when they could be eating from a backyard full of shelled peanuts.” When Gary told me about the exchange later he explained how it was vital to a deer’s health that it get enough roughage in the form of trees and shrubs.

I thought, “Well, at least they’ll chew off the limbs that scrape the top of my car.” 

Since we have established the all you can eat deer policy, the tree no longer scrapes on my car, but exactly one of our four yew bushes has turned golden brown. I could cut it down, because I know the others would fill in the gap, or I could live with a brown bush until spring when I am fairly certain the yew would come back green. It’s hard to kill a forty year old yew. 

One thing I know I won’t be able to do is act like I’m at the top of the food chain and spray deer repellent on the bushes. Gary now wants to put trays of chestnuts by the landscaping to see if they’d prefer nuts to bushes.

Also, “I think my deer would like to eat my bush more than my husband’s nuts” — yes, I am aware of how it sounds.

Car Note

Gary came home with a note someone left him.

The note read:

"Yes, the hippies were right! And I also lived through that era. Just read a new book called "Poisoner in Chief" - appalling what was going on by the evil genius in the CIA."

On the back of the note was a list ("Swerve, garlic powder, price celery").

"What is this?" I asked.

"Oh, it's just a note. Someone put it in a Baggie and stuck it on my car at the store."

"You mean a stranger?"

"Yes. It's happened before. Just throw it away."

I did throw it away, then I fished it out of the trash and took a photo.

So, clearly written by a woman because men don't put circles in their exclamation points, and clearly written to Gary, because he has long white hippie hair now and was probably wearing his "Resist" t-shirt.

Of course, it's possible this woman is just a random writer out at the Florissant Dierbergs store, jotting down book reviews regarding spies and MK Ultra and slapping them on rainy car windows.

Probably a blogger, down on her luck; still needs to weigh in.

Neurologist visit

I visited the neurologist this week and had some questions answered that came up last time.

Brain shadows: Just a lesion that’s being re-myelinated. (MS eats your nerve insulation, which is called myelin, so remyelination is when your myelin grows back.) I didn’t know remyelination was a thing that happens, but yes it is, and the doctor is participating in a number of studies to see if they can help it along. 

Losing lesions: I was concerned that I had fifty lesions before and now I have less, and recent studies suggested that was a bad thing, and he agreed with my husband’s rationalization that the counting isn’t exact and my rationalization that lesion load seems to have no bearing on how I feel.

Overall Health status: “You are the poster girl for Gilenya.”

Sadly, no matter how much I like Gilenya, it isn’t good for one’s immune defenses, and I’ll need better immune defenses as I get older. How old? Sixty-five or so. Only eight years away. It’s okay, there’s a drug that works the same as Gilenya, and it doesn’t tear up ones immune system as much. 

Overall, it was a good visit. It did result in another elevated test, which will lead to a gallbladder ultrasound next week, but I don’t think my gallbladder is in trouble. Of course, I don’t think my brain is in trouble either. 

 

Review: Judy

We went to see Judy last weekend. I can certainly see why Liza Minnelli disavowed it. It’s sympathetic to the causes of Judy Garland’s addiction but pretty harsh about the results.

Of course, I had to come back home and research the accuracy, and it turns out everything is dead-on except for the heartwarming parts. None of the heartwarming parts happened.

I didn’t feel as swept-up in the movie as I usually do. I don’t know if that was the script or because I kept being distracted by the police walkie-talkies outside the door. We chose to see Judy on the same weekend that the Joker movie opened, and the sheriff and two police officers were keeping the lid on any terrorist attacks.

If you’ve seen even just the trailer you know the acting in Judy is remarkable. I kept thinking that Renee Zellweger’s singing was fake, because it was so good. It seemed as if she was lip-syncing to her own voice, but evidently she did sing live in rehearsal. I suppose my brain just refused to believe it.

So, glad I saw it. Would I see it again? Sure.  When it comes up on HBO I’ll fast forward through everything but the singing.

Weekly Paint Progress 10/10 Pre-empted

No oil painting this week. I'm all about the embroidery now.

If you recall, I have to embroider over all the bacon grease spots on my silk shirt. The embroidery is taking up all my relaxation time. It's nice. It's kind of like doodling on your clothing.

The work around the neck was done on machines staffed by what I assume were Chinese children. The chalk marks indicate Bacon. The variously clunky hand embroidery on the torso was done by me.

Special Super Secret Event

I was plugging away at TeddyJ, rolling the rock up the hill, when a company email came in offering a Special Company Event Opportunity.

I registered for it the instant I read the first sentence, not because I wanted it so much, but because it's the type of thing other people want, and you have to grab those opportunities immediately.

What was it? A chance to have my photo taken with the Stanley Cup. Not me drinking out of the cup or anything, mind you, just me and nine TeddyJ strangers photographed in the same frame as the Cup. I'm a fair weather playoffs kind of hockey fan,  not like my Dad, who bought season tickets for a decade plus before he realized they would not be winning the cup until after he died.

While I say "The" Cup, Wikipedia says:

There are actually three Stanley Cups: the original bowl of the "Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup", the authenticated "Presentation Cup", and the spelling-corrected "Permanent Cup" on display at the Hockey Hall of Fame.

The Presentation Stanley Cup has been whoring around touring the city since the St. Louis Blues Hockey team won earlier this year. It already visited Friends #2 and #4 at their new place of employment. For the first month after the big win it dropped in at random bars and drew huge crowds via Twitter and Facebook.

TeddyJ had two stipulations:

1. “You are not allowed to touch the Cup.” Fans touching the cup at certain times in the season is supposed to be good luck. As for players touching the cup, the rules are so convoluted they get their own Wikipedia page.)
2. You shouldn't ”share with people outside TeddyJ that the Cup is coming until after the event," because they didn't want to draw crowds of rowdy true hockey fans ready to beat down the doors of the TeddyJ headquarters.

But, now the event is passed, the photo has been downloaded, and the secret can be revealed. Be jealous!

And yes, that's a photo of Dad I'm holding up.

Ball Game

Yesterday I was lucky enough to go to the most exciting baseball game I  have ever seen live.

Exciting: It was a day game. I had to work on the weekend and start my day at 6:00, but I got to play hooky at a ball game during the day.

Exciting: The price of the parking got my heart going: forty bucks.

Exciting: I was expecting to sit in regular seats, not nosebleed, but by the foul pole, where we were the last time we lucked into division playoff seats for TeddyJ. Instead, we were in the Legends box, because the TeddyJ box was too small to hold all the people TeddyJ sent to the ball game.

Exciting: They are back to cutting the arch into the grass at the ballpark. For some reason I thought they stopped this.

Exciting: You will be shot if you try to run on the field at a Cardinals game.

Exciting: Well, back-to-back homers, then we made errors in the fifth so the score was tied, then the crowd took it upon themselves to send psychic energy via screams to the batters. After one deafening chorus of "YADI! YADI!" Yadier Molina delivered, and then delivered again to win the game in the tenth inning.

Exciting: We ALL kept shouting "YADI! YADI!" all the way out to the parking garage. Three people high-fived me. Some man hugged Gary and me.

Exciting: Gary tried to three-point turn his way into the existing line of cars and it was such a bad idea we decided to go get dinner instead, because the parking was forty dollars and I WAS USING THAT PARKING.

Exciting: We ate at a sports bar, where the Blues game was on, and they scored a goal against the Toronto Maple Leafs. Another strange man high-fived me.

So, exciting ball game and lots of physical contact with strange men. Excellent.

Colors

Why do people choose pastels for nurseries? Life begins at its most intense. Every moment of a baby’s life is fear and hunger and screaming, except when they sleep, and I understand that isn’t often. Nurseries should be painted in day-glo neon colors.

Eventually life becomes a little less stressful: once you can walk and talk the intensity scales back to the three primary colors, then the teenage years add in orange and purple and the blends, then adult life mixes all that with shades of grey and nuance. (With a big surprise splat of red for menopause.)

Hopefully in old age you can deal with all but the most extreme stresses, and all the colors fade until you are in a residence decorated in shades of white and pale grey.

Sadly, some people I know operate in baby day-glo intensity all the time. No therapy helps. Medication can only take it to toddler levels. 

I think this must be why I look forward to old age. I recognize there will be boredom in the nursing home, but I prefer that to drama. 

Liquor Laws

I always thought that the liquor laws in Missouri were very strict. I believe this was because young kids could drive twenty minutes over on the border into Illinois and buy liquor. It seemed there were lots of liquor laws: can’t order it on Election Day, can’t buy it on Sunday, have to be 21 to drink, can’t have an open container in your car. 

As it turns out — and this is another instance of the Man changing the rules and not letting me know — turns out most of those laws are no longer on the books. But they are in my head. As recently as last month I took pains to move an un-corked bottle of wine to the trunk of my car so I wouldn’t drive with booze at the ready.

In fact, only Nevada and New Orleans have laxer liquor laws than Missouri. And with Anheuser-Busch running the show here in St. Louis, I imagine someday there will be drive-through liquor stores like they have in New Orleans. 

Strange to think that Missouri is less conservative than other states in this one aspect. 

 

New Term

I was at work and invited someone to pedeconference. This person was too young to have watched The West Wing and wasn’t familiar with the term. They were familiar with “walk and talk,” though.

Later that day, I had a lot of urgent work to get done and I had a meeting at the same time. I elected to stay at my desk and keep working on the urgent project, but use Skype to teleconference in to the meeting. That happens often enough that I think we need a term for that too.

At first I thought, ”Skype and Type”, but it turns out that’s already taken. We are warned not to “Skype and Type” because hackers can work out what you are typing because each key on the keyboard has a distinctive click.

German, language for expressing all the thoughts in one word, fails us because “type”, “telephone” and “meeting” are spelled ‘typ”, “Telefon”, and “meeting” (or else Google Translate is feeling to lazy to translate, or ”zumfaulumetwaszuschreiben”.)

I settled on the simpler and less obvious “TeleCON”. Because I am conning the people in the meeting.

I feel that a better term is still out there. 

 

Gary's Magical Migraine Thinking

Gary has spent almost eight years now with his chronic persistent migraine. The pain has lessened since the horror of his initial episode. He's taking extra epilepsy medication now for the headaches, so his epilepsy symptoms have backed off as well, which is a nice bonus.

For some reason, two weeks ago his migraine symptoms bumped up. The nausea was back, the light sensitivity, the painful watery eyes, the fatigue. He says it isn't as bad as the first time. After reviewing blog posts from that era, I'd say his level of pain may not be as bad as what sent him to the hospital, but it's as bad as the first month living with the medicated migraine.

This is how Gary is dealing with this recurrence of the persistent migraine.

1. He has bought a special bamboo pillow specifically for side sleepers, because he believes the way he sleeps on his pitiful thirty-year old pillows may be pressing on his trigeminal nerve and exacerbating his migraine. He tried it a few days and it was not the answer.
2. He stopped eating his preferred vegetable course for every meal: grape tomatoes. On any day we have four containers of grape tomatoes in the house because he will suck up one container as a snack. This one worked for several hours.
3. He stopped eating the thin slices of salami he prefers, because they contain some migraine-triggering element in food that begins with an A. This worked for several days.
4. He switched his drugs around so he takes his nighttime drugs in the morning and vice versa. He came out the next morning and announced that it did not work. I asked if he really thought a drug change would work after one day.
5. He bought a top-of-the-line eyepatch because he thought too much light might be getting into his right eye and inflaming his optic nerve. This ... do I have to say it ... did not work.
6. He had some pie, because he read that some people get migraine relief from comfort food. This did work for six hours.
7. He decided that changing up his diet so much was what was causing his migraine.

He came home a few days ago and said that his migraine had spread to his teeth, back, and belly. "GO TO THE DOCTOR," I said, loudly, perhaps too loudly to a man who can't unload the dishwasher because the noise sends him to his bed.

"You are an awful nurse!" he grouched. This is true. Also, he is an awful doctor.

Weekly Paint Progress 10/3

This week the teacups went from this ...

To this ...

And the bowl in back is still not right, but I can't even see what's wrong. I actually stopped looking at what was there and started painting what I thought should be there, and it's only marginally better.

So, after picking over each little reflection and ending up with the same thing, essentially, I decided it was time to get loose and modern instead of picky and backward and tedious.

So I did this in an hour with a palette knife ...

... which STILL does not capture the beauty of Spunky Labia, International Toe Porn Superstar, but it is certainly better than my first attempt a year ago, and that's progress.

Putting away the teacups. Don't know what's next. Perhaps a Monet-like series of Spunky in various lights and styles. No more exact representation, at least for a while.

 

Tech

Gary loves to buy technology, and I hope his interest in technology continues into his old age. I suppose the Internet will keep us up to date when there are technological advances, just like the newspaper did in the past.  Think of the advances in the last fifty years. What new stuff will there be in fifty years when I will be on my last legs? And will I know it’s out there?

I'm worried about this because Band-Aid technology has advanced without me. I went out and bought a variety pack of Band-Aids, and at some point they invented  a new type of Band-Aid that is easier to apply: sterile sheer Band-Aids.

You tear into the usual individual paper packaging, but instead of a Band-Aid that has the peel-off strips on either side of the pad, the Band-Aid stays stuck to one half of the paper packaging. You can then slap the Band-Aid on your arm, rub it on like a rub-on tattoo, and peel off the packaging. Fewer germs, easier to apply if one hand is bleeding, and you don't end up with the Band-Aid stuck to itself.

And see, no one told me about this. There was no CNN report on advances in Band-Aid technology. I suppose I'll have to keep a close eye on young people to see what their Band-Aids look like, and then if I stop seeing Band-Aids at all then I'll ask the pharmacist for “some of that spray-on sterile Superglue that the kids use today."

Revenge of the Lily

I brought some cut lilies home from the supermarket, snipped off the ends, and popped them in a vase of water. 

By the next morning they had gone from lily buds to huge, blooming lilies. I was quite pleased.

In the process they sucked up the entire vase of water. While I carried the vase to the sink, I buried my face in the bouquet and whispered, "You were thirsty, weren't you? Here's some more water."

Then I did other things for three hours.

Then I went to the bathroom, glanced in the mirror, and saw this:

It had been so long since I nuzzled the lilies that it took me a full minute to diagnose myself with Facial Lily Pollen.

It only took half a minute when it happened again with the next bunch of lilies.