Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Blood Drive (thru)

Our doctor’s office has done a wonderful job of keeping up with Gary. Since he’s been feverish for nine weeks, they wanted to check if possibly his thyroid was off (or, I suppose, if he’s suffering side effects of the medication). 

So, for that they needed a blood draw, and while I was special enough to get the nurse to do the porch visit, Gary needed to use the drive-up lab at the hospital.

This is how it’s supposed to go:

1. Drive to the special lot at the edge of the Hospital complex.
2. Park and call the special number posted in front of every parking space.
3. An operator will answer and get your insurance info.
4. The operator tells you to drive to the parking garage and get in line.
5. Hang your arm out of the window and get your blood taken.

Five minutes after we called Gary got impatient and said, “Let’s leave,” and then he said that every ten minutes. After Gary’s “Let’s leave” at the one hour mark I snapped “Fine,” and started to drive off.

I had just backed out when the operator came on line, so while she got our info I was circling to get back to the lot. There is a camera on the lot and she must have seen us leaving. I can only imagine that’s why she skipped step 4 - the step to tell us to drive to the parking garage. She must have seen us on the lot camera and thought that was where we were heading.

So we drove back to where we had been for the last hour and sat on hold again while we fought another forty-five minutes, and then gave up and went home.

Of course, the next day Gary went on his own and everything went seamlessly — he called, they picked up in five minutes, they told him to go to the parking garage, and he did all the waiting there. 

The best part was finding that his thyroid numbers are in the right zone. I suppose the increased meds that helped with that are what’s causing the fever and misery. 

Interesting Paternal Relative, Finally

Well, I cracked the code on Jerry’s ancestors. At some point they changed their name. This means my maiden name does not mean small fenced-in backyard, but instead large locked sheep pasture. I don’t know if this is an upgrade.

The last time he saw us, Jerry admonished my 9-year-old brother to be good because he would carry on the family name. Hmph. That name he was so proud of didn’t exist 100 years earlier.

Once I knew who I was looking for I found DNA matches and finally, a skeleton in the paternal closet to equal the incestuous maternal side. Someone interesting. Jerry’s side had a confederate solider who went AWOL in 1862, returned, then was declared a deserter in 1864. 

if I held any truck with this ancestry nonsense I would point out the significance of my deadbeat father’s family having a history of desertion.

The Guitar Has Come to This

Two days ago I was playing some song on the guitar. I’ve been trying to get my skills back up to where they were: picking out the notes to a tune and and augmenting that with some easy chords. Essentially, I was trying to clamber back to the second rung of solo guitar.

Every once in a while I’d hit a low B note, and it sounded wrong. I thought perhaps  I was playing a song where all the Bs should have all been flat (other people know what key that is, it isn’t the key of B-flat, it’s something else). I checked and no, that wasn’t it. 

I was actually in the process of re-tuning my guitar before I realized I’d just forgotten that I don't have a special string for the low B note. It’s one fret lower than the low C note, and I wasn’t pressing the fret. 

This is like forgetting how to mix purple, or what an adjective is. Very discouraging. Damn, I thought, I have to go back to the bottom rung.

So I vowed to practice my guitar every day. By the end of the next day I was back up on the second rung and on my way to the third one. Peculiar. I’ve never had a hobby that followed the two-steps forward - one-step-back pattern so consistently.

Weekly Paint Progress: 5/28

This week the cenote went from this ...

to this ..

The top of the hole is too straight, and it needs a dappled shadow at the top of the hole, and I took the contrast down too much on the tree. Damn. Will this never end? The most satisfying part is adding the detail, but by the time I get there I am so sick with whatever I’m painting I want it to be over.

I had enough extra paint after I mixed up the ripples to match that I painted a background for something else:

... and the copper bowl went from this .. 

... to this ...

Gary Update

At long last, after these many weeks, Gary has turned the corner. He’s not totally healed, but he can go through the night without a fever, though not through a whole day.

He was even feisty enough to try to pick an argument with me, but I did not engage. It was a sign of good health.

What has he had? I don’t care. The doctor’s office checked up on him, which was nice. I don’t know what he told them. I don’t care. All I know is I’d rather have a feisty troublemaker than a big lump of feverish flesh in the bed.

 

 

Peony Update

Remember the refrigerated peonies?

Turns out the trick to refrigerating peonies is knowing what type of peonies you have. Single-petal peonies can be refrigerated in the hard-bud stage, but multi-petal peonies like mine must be refrigerated in the “marshmallow” - bud stage. The peonies in the fridge were clipped way too soon, and are now consigned to a life of permanent adolescence.

You can see them in the photo below: sad little balls of nothing.

The two pink peonies above, however, were snipped at the perfect pre-ant Marshmallow stage and put right into the water, not in the fridge.

And you know what? I don’t even want to see what happens when you put a marshmallow-stage peony in suspended animation in the refrigerator. Don’t care. i don’t need peonies in October. Peonies without ants in the spring are fine for me.

Gather your peony buds while ye may, while the ants are not a-crawling. If you squeeze them and they feel like a marshmallow, you won’t need to drown the ants.

Then you can have a big bouquet in your room the next day, making it even more like a hotel.

Baby Time

I was surprised to look through the wildlife cam photos and find baby raccoons.
Usually the babies don’t show until the first week of June. Based on the date these were two weeks ahead of schedule. They look pretty chunky for babies, too. I think someone’s been holding out.

But it is baby season. Gary complained that he put out half a bag of peanuts and they were all gone the next day. Usually this means that Gary will put out an entire bag the next night, but he said, and I quote, “screw those piggy little babies.”

There had been some drama deep in the night when another mama had to defend a baby that had just done something indefensible.

In contrast to the chubby baby raccoons, at dusk I have been seeing the tiniest baby squirrels ever. I read that you rarely see small squirrels, because they don’t leave the nest until they have fur. I take that to mean they have to hit puberty. Well, this year we have four tiny peach-fuzz squirrels out here. Size of baby kittens, if you don’t count the tail.

Raccoon babies too big, squirrel babies too small. That should go in the Farmer’s Almanac as signs of a global pandemic.

Space Launch

I was trying to get some context around Wednesday’s manned rocket launch. Who is flying? Who made the spacecraft? Where are they going?

(Some of those questions took me down a rabbit trail to the NASA astronaut page, where I read that evidently an astronaut is retiring. This is a strange concept. How can an astronaut retire? I suppose you could stop giving interviews? Your Wikipedia page is still going to say Astronaut.)

It’s confusing that we now have astronauts flying on private Tesla-built spacecraft. They’ll arrive at the launch pad in a Tesla: that’s just worrisome. It’s also worrisome that the NASA spaceflight head just stepped down days ago, but they assure us that it was because of a bad decision that doesn’t affect the mission.

Finally, I tracked down the name of one of the astronauts — seriously, imagine a 60’s child having to “track down” John or Virgil or Buzz or Wally — and it turns out he was born in St. Ann, the same suburb of St. Louis where my grandma lived. He went to Pattonville High School. (He was there a few years too late for me to play Six Degrees of High School Separation, every St. Louisian’s favorite game.)

Godspeed, Robert Behnken, astronaut now and forever.

Halloween Costumes

Halloween this year is going to be ALL about the topical costumes.

• Get a Qtip, cut off one end, and adhere the cut end with spirit gum just inside your nose. You don’t need to tickle your brain to look like you are getting a swab test.

 

• Put flour on your hair and skin, wear white clothes, a red MAGA hat, and be someone who injected bleach because the President suggested that might be a good idea. Or, paint on a fake tan and go as the person who tried to use sunlight to kill the virus. That could be a couples’ costume.

 

• Here’s another couples‘ costume: one person dons a white kitchen trash bag, the other wears pink and fashions a spiky coronavirus out of some old knitted Pussy hats from 2016, and the white blood cell in the trash bag can attack and absorb the pink coronavirus intermittently through the evening.

 

• Take a black t-shirt and some white fabric paint, and paint a pulmonary covid x-ray on the shirt:
  
  
  
• An obvious one for the blond ladies: all you need is a scarf.

• This coverall is just ten bucks at Amazon.

• For those of you with small children, it seems like there could be a child’s hand sanitizer costume cobbled out of one of those big water cooler bottles, but you would have to jam the child’s torso into the water bottle and then fill it partly with gelatin up to waist level. 

This all assumes there will be a Halloween this year.

Well, Crap.

So, in January I was all set with Barenaked Ladies and Beach Boys tickets. Then there was the Covid, and I was not looking forward to being packed into a concert venue.

Yesterday came the news that Barenaked Ladies are just shifting their 2020 tour to 2021, and tickets will still be valid. Great! Great for everyone, except the people in the four cities where they couldn’t reschedule, like ... Saint Louis.

Poor Saint Louis Music Park - St. Louis built it, and for their first year they get a global pandemic, so no concerts. Still, they promise to send a refund sometime in the next month.

Beach Boys need to cancel next. Then I need to just hunker down here in my room until the virus mutates like in The Andromeda Strain or until the llamas save us all.

Weekly Paint Progress; 5/21

This week the cenote went from this...

... to ... 

The shadow is too dark now, and the edge makes no sense, but that’s easy to fix. The tongue that juts out over sinkhole is gone now, because it was making no sense to me, other than it made the shadow. I’m not fixing it anything but the edge of the hole, and I daub some colors on the top right and call it.

I need to select my next practice from the book. I think I’m going to try for the purple flowers in the copper pot - only there’s a ridiculous amount of copper detail, and no explanation of how it’s done. It starts out loose:

... and then gets really delightfully detailed. Look at that bowl!

Should be fun.

Butt Stuff

Gary and I are pretty grabby with each other, which is strange because I’m not physical with anyone else. I’m not a big hugger. 

I didn’t realize how much time we spent nose-booping or hair-ruffling until the covid kept us away from each other. 

We have now established a new tradition to take the place of our nightly goodnight kiss: the nightly goodnight baboon butt rub. We stand on opposite sides of the hallway in the doorways of our respective rooms. Then we face away from each other, back into the hallway until our butts meet, then spend some time rubbing our butts against each other. 

Every night the butt rub takes a different tone. Some nights it’s a big rumbly rub fest, some nights it’s a perfunctory bump. Last night there was a repetitive thrusting quality that reminded me of early sex, when you both have your own rhythm going, and one person’s on the out-step when the other’s expecting the in-step.

I think I might miss the butt-bumping when life goes back to normal.

Another Step Away from My Gilenya

Well, I am now definitely saying goodbye to my Gilenya and hello to Mayzent, which is supposedly the safer version of the same drug. It lets ones immune system bounce back if needed, and in these Dark Times one needs a good immune system.

I looked at the patient-targeted literature for this new drug, and if I recall it said something like, “this is good if you have relapsing-remitting MS” (me me!) “or if you have had a reduction in lesions” (also me ... uh-oh ... ) ‘or if you have secondary progressive MS.” (not me, I guess ... yet?) It was just a disturbing confirmation that I seem to be trudging on to the More Serious MS even though I thought the progression was stopped in its tracks. I stopped any new lesions, but evidently at my age there’s a turn, the lesions disappear, and take a little bit of brain with them. Still, you can’t deny I have fewer lesions than I might have had, so less worry about vital brain parts vanishing.

Also, the best predictor of the future is the past, and I have had a comically easy course of relapsing MS. I anticipate an equally easy coast down this new road.

Barf. Anyway, enough heroism. I just can’t stand all this positivity. Let’s get on with the bitching.

To continue my crawl toward this new drug, I needed to check off a vaccination checkbox, so today I got my first dose of the Shingrix shingles vaccine.

First off, I had to find a place to get it. Doctors’ office? No, just telemedicine. Walgreens? No, CDC says it’s not essential. I ended up getting it at Target, where there was a little CVS counter. Target. I felt like I was in a dream. “And then suddenly I was getting a vaccination but it was at Target and the pharmacist was a sheep in black underwear.”

”Oh, you should know,” the pharmacist said, after he gave me the shot, “your arm will hurt.” That was four hours ago, and I just raised my arm to scratch my head and almost fell down. I laughed uncontrollably, that’s how much it hurt, and the last time I laughed at pain was when the physical therapist tore apart my frozen shoulder. 

This how much it hurts: the side effects section for the vaccine reassures you that Shingles hurt more. “Not as bad as SHINGLES” it chirps.

“How long does this last?” I wondered. I googled. DAYS. Two DAYS. I may be distracted by the chills and fever and vomiting, though. (I swear, I just typed ‘fever’ and I started feeling hot.) I will get the same side effects after — get this — shot number two, which is scheduled for July. 

Of course, I am being a baby. It only hurts if I try to use my arm, for anything like, say, touching my face, which I don’t do, or painting, which I should do. I put off last Saturday’s painting because of the basement puddle, so next Thursday’s paint update will be thin.

I know, risk vs reward, permanent disability vs two days of arm pain, but damn. 

Stone Rabbit

While the streets might be dotted with dead deer, the lawns are littered with live rabbits.

A few days ago I stepped out the front door and saw a chunky brown rabbit right outside. I expected it to dart off at my next step, but it just stared dully at me with leaden eyes while I walked within two feet of it. I collected the mail and the paper, and stopped by the rabbit on the way back in.

”Go away, dude.”

He stared. Not a panicked stare. A bored get-off-my-lawn-lady stare.

I opened the door and realized why he hadn’t escaped: I’d blocked his warren access with a large rock in an effort to dry the leaky basement. 

”Just go around the side. Plenty of ways into your warren.” 

He didn’t budge. I went inside and deposited the mail and the paper. I got some coffee. I looked outside again. Still there. I opened the front door to say, “Act like a rabbit, dude,” and he bounded away.

The next day he was in the middle of the back yard, immobile. Gary speculated that He was a She, and she was sitting on a nest. 

The day after that I went to look at the peonies in the side yard. First, I noticed the mulch in the peony bed on my left blocked the warren entrance. And, there on my right, sat the fearless phlegmatic rabbit. I figured I’d see how close I could get, maybe into foot-nudging territory. When I was one step away the rabbit bolted, five bonus rabbits exploded out of the peony bed, and all six vanished into the neighbor’s yard.  

I exclaimed either “Jesus Christ!” or “Fuck!” — I hope it was “Jesus Christ” because I immediately heard my neighbor tell his four year old daughter to “look at all the bunnies, sweetie!” Sweetie and Dad were looking out of their open back door. 

We had a nice talk about how he’s never seen so many rabbits, and he suspects there might be a rabbit nest under his back porch. I didn’t tell him there is a rabbit metropolis extending from his porch to mine, and I had blocked off all the entrances but his. 

Graves

Last Friday I was in a cemetery attending a burial. It isn’t a new cemetery. Not only did I walk through this cemetery on my way home from grade school, Gary did the same eight years earlier, in the ‘60s.

I noticed a new grave a few yards away.

Then I noticed another.

Then I started counting. There were nine fresh graves I could see; who knows how many more if I had turned around. 

Of course, I attributed the fresh graves to the Covid. 

Later, though, I realized that it had rained that morning, at the end of a rainy week. Any exposed dirt will look new when it’s water-logged. I decided what I was looking at were just graves the grass hadn’t covered yet, and the muddy clumps were from the spring rains.

On the afternoon drive home, Gary and I saw a dead deer on the side of the road and said the requisite “Aww.” Still, I thought, odd, because the crews that tidy the roadkill usually get on it in the morning, and that deer looked like it had been dead a while, and “Oh God, is that another dead deer?”

Yes. Within half a mile another slightly smaller yet just as dead deer. 

Again, I attributed the deer carcasses to the Covid. Not that they died of it, just that the crews hadn’t picked them up. I don’t suppose picking up dead deer is considered an essential task, and perhaps the people who usually report the roadkill are sheltering in place.

Or more likely, I want to attribute everything to Covid to give it more importance, because I want my life disrupted by something of significance rather than a nuisance.

Rewriting the Novel: Research

So, you know Jerry’s novel is set in an oil boom town in Oklahoma in 1930. He’s got all the details you would want regarding a 1930 oil derrick, but that’s about all. Even though it’s not a historical novel, I want the other details to be right. 

Initially, all I wanted to know was if they had poker chips in 1930. I started looking a week ago. I don’t know the answer, because then I began reading about the money in 1930, and that was amazing, because 1929 was the year they decided to carve an inch off the money. In 1928 the standard currency was an inch bigger all around. I say standard - there was a lot of non-standard currency issued by regional national banks. Before that, if you were a bank, evidently you could just make up your own currency, and it was very pretty, and before that you could have square bills if you like, like Confederate money, and thirty percent of the currency was counterfeit. I tell you this because I have to tell someone, because that week’s worth of research is going to be boiled down to one descriptive phrase.

For more research I also watched a pretty poor Clark Gable movie named Boom Town — and I was frightened every moment that Jerry might have watched it and I would see an example of subconscious plagiarism unfolding on the screen — but I was relieved to see a) it was about wildcatters and was b) actually pretty inaccurate.

(The money in the movie was entirely wrong for the time period. ASK ME HOW I KNOW.)

Also, they would have us believe that you name an oil well after your girlfriend, as you would a bomber jet, when anyone knows you name it after whoever’s name is first on the land lease. Please. 

[Spoilers, if you can spoil a movie from 1940.] There was one very unrealistic plot hole — Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert meet and spend a pleasant evening at a rodeo. (That was a scary moment - there was a rodeo in Jerry’s book.) The next morning, Claudette’s boyfriend Spencer Tracy shows up and she says, sorry, met and married Clark Gable here yesterday. They weren’t in Vegas, no one was drunk, just somewhere between 12 midnight when they were winding up their date and seven the next morning they fell in love, and, “got married.” I know, 1940’s movie, set in 1918-1940, but for God’s sake. 

Of course, it was actually pretty entertaining to see their interpretation of a boom town and compare it to Jerry’s. The movie has an oil well gusher and it’s a marvelous event — compared to Jerry’s book preaching about how gushers are a scandalous waste of money, they catch fire, burning oil rains down on people, it’s not fun. I suppose it’s some gritty realism. Accuracy over drama.

We’ll have to see what’s next, if I can ever get out of this research rabbit hole.

Goodbye Yell a Big Grow

Am I the only one who has no idea what Elton John is singing? I knew I had a problem understanding the words to Rocketman. It’s not just Rocketman. I recently looked up the lyrics to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

The first verse is fine. It’s intelligible. Then, at the chorus, it goes south.

So, goodbye yellow brick road [okay]
Where the dogs of society howl [let me know if ANYONE knew those were the words - I hear “in the dockside society house”]
You can't plant me in your penthouse [can’t trap me in your henhouse?]
I'm going back to my plough [I did get this by the “henhouse” context]

Back to the howling old owl in the woods [I got “back to the cabin, oh, out in the woods”]
Hunting the horny back toad [“hunting the honey back tow”]

Oh I've finally decided my future lies [“oh, I’m out in the side of my picture life”]

Beyond the yellow brick road

 

What do you think you'll do then? [this I can hear]
I bet that'll shoot down your plane [not “I’ll practice you down the plain?”] 
It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics to get you on your feet again [I have usually stopped listening by this point, but then he ropes me back in with a whole verse I can understand.]

After the comprehensible verse he gets me again with:

 

Sniffing for tidbits like you on the ground [“Steppenwolf tuppence like you,” followed by warbling.]

 

Now that I have looked up the words, they’re really good. There’s a story and progression. All the stuff I love! Why would he ruin his lyrics by singing them that way - and of course I realized, they aren’t his lyrics. They’re Bernie Taupin’s lyrics. I bet Bernie’s pissed about that.

 

What’s really sad is that if I’m not actively looking at the real words, I still hear “in the dockside society house“ — it’s engraved in the neurons. Sad.

 

Weekly Paint Progress: 5/14

This week the cenote went from this...

... to this ...

...and oh, do I hate it now. When the foreground bush dries it is going back to green-black there, and I don’t know what’s going on with that tongue hanging over the hole.

The teacup went from this ...

to this ...

... and I hate this too. Not a good week for painting. But I’m calling this done. This is what I was aiming for. Not quite right, especially on the teacup, but I’ve got so many layers of white and grey on that thing that I’d have to sandblast to get to a paintable surface.

This Post Brought to You by the Letter U

The entertainment I liked this month has all been on Amazon Prime (perhaps elsewhere too?) and all of it started with the letter U.

First - okay, so do you like funny Barenaked Ladies songs about depression? Do you enjoy the My Favorite Murder podcast? Do you like the contrast of dark subjects and light silliness? If so, check out Buzzfeed’s Unsolved: True Crime and Unsolved: Supernatural on Amazon. The True Crime one is essentially the My Favorite Murder podcast, but with giggly men instead. They include one of my favorite things: they write out some of the dialog onscreen, and somehow writing it out makes it funnier.  (You could have a drinking game with the word “snort”.) In the later seasons there is some clever work with the graphics. (Like everything, the first season and first set of hosts is rocky, so don’t go by that. Season 2 is like the second model year of a new car: they’ve worked the kinks out.)

In the true crime vein, I also watched the documentary Unseen, about a serial killer who preyed on marginalized women. Reviews on IMDB were love/hate. I saw the point of the haters, it was dull in parts — peppered with insanity. The convenience store owner -- what he said? Crazy! The visit to the bathroom? Jesus!

Finally, I think I remember seeing trailers for the series Upload at the movie theater. It’s a funny concept: if your death is imminent you can decide to have your consciousness digitally uploaded. It’s cute and mindless. Kind of a socially satirical rom-com.

Next month I guess it’s on to the V’s.

Basement Vacation

So, if the guest room is my new hotel room, the basement is my new vacation spot: the place I go to unwind. I unwind there because the basement has the pink table that holds the painting area.

The saggy Home Depot box lined with black landscaping fabric is where I have staged any still life - like the gourds and the teacups. You put the object in the box so no other light gets to it, and then you can light it directly — in my case, with the light that sits on my husband’s workbench.

That little iPad next to the light plays “relaxing” episodes of the My Favorite Murder podcast while I paint. Usually when I have a project, what I listen to is woven into to the project in my mind. The art glass project in the backyard contains the news about Chandra Levy and then 9/11. Oddly, I can’t tell you what Murder connects to each painting stacked up on the right side of the workbench.

The best part of any hobby or vacation is the organization. Is that not the coolest pivoting paint storage box? Transparents in one side, opaques in the other.

I suppose like all vacation spots, it has to be close to the water, and in my basement corner, there’s the water that frequently bubbles through the basement floor when it rains. You can see the “shoreline” in the middle of the photo.

Painting is as good as meditation for getting the dark thoughts out of your head. I know painter’s studios as supposed to be full of light, but I’m not there yet. You can stick me in the dark corner of my damp basement with murders in the background and I am fine.

Guest Room Hotel Room

Since Gary’s been sick with whatever it is that he has — flu, covid, a really really bad head cold  — he is shunning me hard. He has his room, I have mine, and when on occasion we accidentally meet in the same room we do the big six-foot do-si-do. He has insisted I take my daily toilette out of his room so I don’t enter the death zone. So now my little guest room / music room / home office has a new identity: hotel room where I now have to keep a smaller version of my stuff:

• the daily pills
• one pair of pajamas that still fit comfortably
• one pair of pants that still fit comfortably
• one boxy shirt I can wear without a bra
• one emergency bra which I have yet to wear
• two face masks

When I’m in a hotel room I immediately stow away anything that identifies the place as a hotel: stationery, advertising, the Things to Do In Our City book. I hide anything that spoils the fantasy that this isn’t normal life. Now that I have moved entirely in my little room, I’ve had to find secret hiding places for the face masks and the work laptop, both things that spoil the fantasy of normality.

I am strangely happy with this set-up. It does feel like a little hotel, or maybe a cunning little campsite. Usually, I am dismayed when Gary shuns me. I mean, if he spends half an hour in the bathroom my abandonment issues bubble up. But this setup is nice. It almost makes me start to think how I’m going to decorate and hide things in my inevitable nursing home room. 

Peonies in the Fridge

There was a freeze warning in our area last Friday, odd for May, and I covered the peony buds with burlap. But first, I harvested half of the buds, because Facebook tells me you can put them in the fridge and force them to bloom later at your will. 

I’ve forced blooms with cut forsythia, I think I remember mom forced paper-whites in the winter, but I’ve never heard about this peony trick. 

If this works — if I can actually have peonies without the ants —that is a game changer.

Not Quite the Blue Angels

So, our city, thankfully, was not hit hard enough by the Covid to qualify for a flyover by the Blue Angels, but we did get a flyover by the dashing, jaunty ... Stealth Bomber.

I felt the Stealth Bomber is an odd choice to honor our essential workers. You want Superman flying overhead to inspire you, you don’t want Batman.

I can attest to its stealth: I was outside at 5:16 and I did not see it or hear it.

The Best Thing I Have Eaten These Few Months

So, when the confinement began, I tallied up our food and realized that my desire to limit my carbs didn’t match up with my available food. The highly successful diet  got me five pounds away from my goal weight, but it was just too inconvenient, and frankly, I was ready for a break. I took a break at Christmas, gained seven pounds and lost seven pounds in three weeks. 

So, like Christmas, I committed to eating carbs - not late at night, not solid sugar, just things like popcorn and pasta and bread. That was last month. This month I became determined to pack in all the foods I missed at Christmas, sugary or not. I had Oreos and Pepperidge Farm cookies. Pancakes for breakfast. Ice cream. Stress makes your metabolism go up ten percent, right?

The sugary foods I’m eating bring me no satisfaction. I eat sugar and it does not fill a need.

But then, last Monday, I ate the thing I have been missing. The food to end all foods. The thing that completes me.

Hush Puppies. 

We had just finished getting Gary’s tests, and I had been craving hush puppies for the first time in what seems like twenty years, and I sinned, I sinned. I went through a drive-through, open no doubt because it was the first day Missouri was back to work. I did wrap a Lysol wipe around the cash I handed the guy. I washed my hands after; I hope he washed his hands. And then I got home and ate a hush puppy. It was crispy and tender and creamy and I was made whole.

I bought 12 days worth of hush puppies. I won’t need any sugar.

Weekly Paint Progress: 5/7

This week the cenote went from this...

... to this:

The teacup went from this ...

to this ...

The left edge of the cup is a mess, because I am not patient enough. I like the table edge, though. I’m not going to do anything else but work on the many problems with the teacup. I’m leaving everything else as is.

Gary Update / Letter from The Donald

[Gary update: no virus in the swab test, and there was no antibody test - Gary misunderstood what the blood draw was for. They checked his liver numbers for some reason.]

Anyway. So, like all other direct tax depositors, we got a touching letter from Donald Trump letting us know he had sent us lots of money. The letter was definitely from him. Heart attack signature and everything.

I immediately passed it off to Gary, who read the back — which I hadn’t done. “Why is the President writing in Spanish?” he asked. The Spanish translation was on the back.

It surprised me that he would anger his base by admitting he had sent stimulus money to Mexicans. Perhaps he only sent it to the Some He Is Sure Are Good People. 

It reminded me of the Bush Rebate Check skit on Saturday Night Live.  (I have hunted for video, and I can’t find it because it was on a special Thursday Prime Time episode. But I found the transcript.)

President George W. Bush: (Will Farrell) [ holding large check ] I have a check here – that is a big check – made out to the U.S. Taxpayer, for the amount of $1,600, which is the average tax cut for a family of four under my plan. And all I’m asking in return, is you start being cool to me. Ever since I got here, people have had low expectations of the Bushie ... I’m asking you, America, to be my buddy. I’m giving you $1,600 bucks. Al Gore wouldn’t give you any money – he would bore you with one of his lectures, and give the money to a tree. Not me. I’m giving cash, in exchange for us becoming compadres ... Feel free to come down to the Bush White House – that’s 800 Pennsylvania Avenue – where I trade cash for your approval.

They need to revive that skit.

Gary’s Visit

Well, the day began with Gary stomping around, demanding that he could drive himself to urgent care center where he was supposed to get the chest X-ray to rule out Covid pneumonia. The stomping wore him out so much that he said I’d have to drive him: he was too weak. We expected to get the chest x-ray at the urgent care, and then be sent to the hospital if needed for a swab test.

The access to the Urgent Care was complex. We had to drive to the back service door, park, call a phone number, a nurse came out, asked some questions, and then led Gary into the building.

Half an hour later I got a text from Gary I did not expect.

Surprise! In addition to administering the chest x-ray we expected, the nurse offered a nasal swab. Gary said she actually discouraged it — she said if he’d been sick for three weeks there probably wouldn’t be any virus left in his nose. He said “No, my wife has a compromised immune system and I need to know everything.”

When he came out, I asked if the nasal swab was as bad as they say. According to Gary, yes, it’s bad. His right eye was still watering. I was going to kid him about having a long thing violate him in a sensitive, internal place and how he might get a bladder infection. I didn’t, though, since it seems swabs are his new love language.

He actually got three tests: the chest x-ray, the nasal swab, and the antibody test. So far the chest x-ray did not show any covid pneumonia: the doctor called with those results a few hours later. Gary’s pulse oxygen was at 93%, which was a little lower than expected. (The home pulse oximeter has said 95-97%.) I don’t know when the swab and antibody tests are expected. Probably sometime Tuesday or Wednesday.

Kentucky Derby, Kind Of

Like Dave from Blogograhy was saying, sometimes there are so many CoVid diversions that you don’t have time for them all. 

That happened to me on Saturday when the second Steven Page Zoom concert conflicted with the virtual running of the Kentucky Derby. NBC Sports set up a fake derby between all the Triple Crown winners. I had to see my boy Secretariat win the virtual race, given he still holds the record in all three races of the Triple Crown.

I wore the Celebrity Hat out to the backyard to pick some weedy fuzzy scrub mint for my mint julep. It had three ounces of bourbon, which tasted very nice over some ice I made and crushed, and only gave me a little headache. 

Then I went back in and watched the concert. I am sure no one on Zoom noticed me slyly watching the race on my phone for about two minutes. (Spoiler - Secretariat won.)

Toward the end of the concert Steven Page asked the 800 people on the Zoom to unmute and sing along with The Chorus Girl. (Because as he will tell you in his Ted Talk, that’s the most important part.) It was hilariously bad. Picture a Demon Chorus singing ‘la la la laaah la.’ So, still with the delightful screw-ups, only this time it involved the audience screwing up. Fun for everyone!

Ugh - Answers Delayed

Gary got the call from the urgent care yesterday morning — and they put him off until Monday. He says he’s fine, but of course on top of his angry protestations that he’s fine, he lists his symptoms.

I’M FINE I’M JUST CONFUSED

I’M FINE I’M JUST DIZZY

I’M FINE I’M JUST FEVERISH 

NO DON’T TAKE MY TEMPERATURE

I AM FINE

And then on Monday ... all he gets is a chest X-Ray. After that then we get to have the debate about getting swabbed. I’m compiling my arguments already. I plan to tell him he has an obligation to be another statistic that makes the President look bad. 

Gary Gets Officially Sick

Thursday Gary felt great. He’s been saying for weeks that he had the covid but was showing no fever. It’s been this running commentary.

Him: “My toes hurt ...my eye hurts ... I am so tired ... I am sweating like a pig ...”

Me: “Get a test. Tell the doctor. Don’t tell me. I can’t treat you.”

Him: “I feel so fatigued ...” Repeat. But then Thursday he was fine.

On Friday morning, after I heard that often there is no fever with the Covid, I said what I think were the magic words: “I BELIEVE you have the virus. You don’t have to convince me.” I think this turned him to a new purpose: Proving Me Wrong. After weeks of “I am sick,” he switched to “I am fine. I will show you.”

He felt good in the morning, then he lay down on his back, and after he found he couldn’t breathe in that position, he actually sent an email to the doctor.

He almost immediately got a call from someone at Washington University Medical Center, and evidently he’s been doing all the right steps and is slated for a test (supposedly) sometime today. 

So, hopefully today he’ll get all sorted out. 

The Best Show Since the Beginning of the Pandemic

Of all the things a I’ve been binge-watching — Ozark, WestWorld, Buzzfeed Unsolved — I think the most enjoyable recently was the Backyard Show, in which we spend time watching what’s going on in the backyard.

The Dim-witted Momma raccoon continues to crawl over the neighbors’ fence and disappear into their backyard. I think maybe the reason she seems to vanish is that she climbs the fence so slowly, then pivots and goes down the fence so slowly ... and then I think she runs like hell. That’s why she seems to disappear. 

Soon it will be June, and we will have the baby skunks. We have at least four GlamourSkunks now. Last week two of them appeared in the videos, flanking a raccoon, like bookends.

The most enthralling thing was when the Cooper’s Hawk arrived and ate a raven. We didn’t know it was a raven at the time, we just knew that a Cooper’s Hawk that looked to be wearing leg warmers kicked and shredded a big pair of black legs sticking up out of a big pile of black feathers. We put it together with the video later. This was the order of video images: 1) giant eye-catching raven, 2) no raven, 3) nothing on camera but a close up of the tail of a Cooper’s Hawk. I guess he finished and was surveying his killing field.

The spectacle was gross but very entertaining. It was like a True Crime series.