Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Rewriting the Novel: Dreams

Okay, now I’m dreaming about the novel. This was not a Kubla Khan dream. This was an awful dream, a Puppies in Peril dream. 

Somehow, my dreaming subconscious decided it would be a fine plot point if someone in this Oklahoma boom town decided to put puppies in bags and toss them off roofs. I don’t know why, maybe as a sacrifice to the oil gods? My dream didn’t track the progress of the puppies, it’s possible they escaped the bags and could suddenly fly.

What’s happening now is I am writing half a page a week, and making about five notes a week, because out of nowhere I’ll think of an interesting idea that may entertain someone for half a phrase. Perhaps the puppy dream is a guilt dream because I am not writing enough? Perhaps. 

More probably, I find the current plot boring. Gotta jazz it up with flying puppies.

 

 

Thirty Years

My brother has been a recovering alcoholic for 30 years. That’s a long, long time.

Evidently if you’re make it to 30 years, your chance of relapse is less that 15 percent. That’s encouraging. 

I don’t know that I could stick with one thing for 30 years. How could I make it if society said, “You cannot argue with your husband for 30 years” or “no food for you for 30 years.” (Alcoholism might have been a problem for me, given that it runs in the family on both sides, but thankfully liquor tastes vile and doesn’t affect my mood as well as food does.)

It’s a shame he couldn’t have a 30 years celebration with his friends clapping him on the back and giving him hugs, but he invited me to his AA meeting on Zoom, which was very nice.

Turkey Soup Recipe

1. Go into kitchen at 8:30 am and assemble all the turkey soup parts on the counter.
2. Roast bones.
3. Make stock.
4. Realize you need to de-fat this if you want to eat it today.
5. Do speed de-fatting like Mom did with the ice cubes.
6. Research Best De-fatting device and order it on Amazon so this doesn’t happen next year.
7. Chop vegetables.
8. Ask husband to help chop vegetables and season the stock in his special way.
9. Watch as husband adds butter and sautés each vegetable before he adds them to the de-fatted stock, essentially adding a stick and a half of butter to the broth. 

It turned out really well, though. I suppose milk fat is tastier than turkey fat.

 

Thanksgiving

Well, welcome to Thanksgiving in the bubble. 

All of this reminds me of the year Mom died, when I celebrated Hannukah so I could avoid the first Christmas without Mom. I think that if life takes away an essential part of a tradition, like a Mom, you can get a little of your own back by breaking with tradition yourself.

So, this Thanksgiving, Gary and I are staying in our bubble, just like all brain-based humans in America, and because life took away our traditional holiday, I’m responding by saying to life, “I can do that too.”

What am I doing? A stupid minor thing, but it delights me. I’m deconstructing our turkey. This year there will be no brown turkey to carve with legs and thighs and breast all in one. America’s Test Kitchen aired an old episode in which they cooked the dark and white meat separately.

(Had I stuck with tradition, I would have also been stuck with a fully frozen turkey on Thursday. I obediently followed the Facebook advice to put the frozen turkey in the refrigerator on Sunday, and when I chiseled it apart on Wednesday night it was still just as frozen. Had I poked at the whole turkey on Thursday morning it would have been unusable. )

I suspect Macy’s is doing the same. They said, “We can’t have crowds at the parade? Well then, all bets are off, we’re tying the balloons to flatbeds and driving them around instead, so there.” I am surprised they didn’t just cobble together balloon video from old parades. 

I expect there were more than the usual number of nuclear families eating brisket or lamb instead of turkey this year, just to get back at life.

As a result, Gary has not stopped raving about the excellent turkey. Separating the white and dark meat is going to be a new tradition.

Weekly Paint Progress: 11/26

This week the peonies went from this ...

... to this:

The orange glazing project went from this:

... to this:

The Orange appears to be a bit overripe. I think I will stop on this one.

Oh, and happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful Gary is still here despite his (crosses self) Covid. He feels much better - he doesn’t even need his cane anymore.

The Season’s Cheese

Only 30 shopping days until Christmas!

Yeah, and then what? Given how this year has been measured out in coffee spoons full of POISON, it seems like this year there should be a multitude of tiny little gifts instead of one big gift. Perhaps that’s why so many friends have been buying themselves Advent Calendars. Advent Wine Calendars, Advent Cheese Calendars. 

Done. Exotic cheese of the day calendar for me. I suppose I should get something for Gary too. Well, he can have half the cheese. 

Skipping Appointments

The doctor’s office called to say our sainted GP will be working in the ICU on the day of our physicals, so I opted to have the physicals with the Physician’s Assistant.

Gary heard about it and stated forcefully that he was not visiting any hospitals with the covid spike the way it is now. The covid is currently a red and silver miasma pulsing out of the hospital roof and floating down to the parking lot. I suppose we could run our windshield wipers and knock all the covid dust off, but it just seems wiser to not risk it.

I also cancelled the mammogram appointment that I made last week. Back then, the woman making my appointment said I called at a good time, there were openings now, when the week before they’d been booked out to January. Now they could get me in a few days. It didn’t occur to me to ask what happened to all those December appointments, and of course all of Saint Louis is under a lockdown. This is an absolutely non-essential mammogram.

I hope my doctor stays safe working in the ICU and dodges the microbes.

2020 Retrospective

My favorite time of year is fast approaching. No, not Thanksgiving. Not Christmas.  It will soon be Retrospective Time again.

2020: The Year In Review. What do you think the big story will be?

Of course, this year, some CNN or Time intern has been tasked with finding the Non-COVID stories. Australia caught fire, there were hurricanes, and Herman Cains, and then we’re back to Covid again.

Perhaps they should have blank pages dedicated to what didn’t happen, like a big empty five page spread on the Olympics. 

I can’t imagine what I’ll do Jan 1, when I usually my make own year in review. You know, the post filled with all the concerts and vacations. Sigh. 

Weekend Time

It annoys Gary, but I like to do two things at once - especially if one of the things I am doing is watching television. I like to clean up after dinner and watch television, or do the laundry and watch television. 

(In case you think I’m overly burdened with domestic work, and that makes Gary feel like a slacker in that he is not doing housework and laundry ... to be honest I am usually reading Facebook or doing a NYT crossword from 1998 while I’m watching television. You can add a third task, ignoring the dust and potato chip debris in the room with the television.)

This super-productivity goes dormant on the weekends. This past work week I tabled a dozen things that I needed to do, so I could do them on the weekend - and the weekend came and I did none of those things.

Instead, I just spent FIVE HOURS laser-focused on seeing how I could join a Zoom call with an Alvin the chipmunk voice. I even missed breakfast because I was so intent of doing just that one thing.

Rewriting the Novel: New Phase

Done with the outline and on to writing. Much more fun than outlining. Of course there are new problems.

When I was in the community college class, the teacher commented that there were no noticeable differences between my writing voice and Jerry’s. That day has passed. I am retooling chapter one and now it’s all expository dialog and pedestrian descriptions, which are especially garbage next to Jerry’s really lovely and polished descriptions.

Of course, Jerry’s draft had already been through the garbage phase, plus he was probably in a state of creative mania, so he had that going for him. Right now I’m just getting the characters off the train and into town. 

Another issue is that I’ve shifted to first person, and it’s a false note when my earnest and practical heroine shifts gears into poetic descriptions. I’ll have to get out Jane Eyre and Rebecca and see how they did that. They didn’t do it in the first draft, probably.

Gavle Goat

I was discussing Zozobra and Burning Man with a friend who clued me in to what must be the greatest of all Fiery Catharsis Voodoo Dolls: the Swedish Gävle Goat, or Gävlebocken.

First off, the goat is just really visually pleasing. It’s a Swedish Yule goat, which is evidently a straw goat with a handle. It makes a good Christmas ornament.

Alternatively, you can get the 50 foot high version.

That’s the straw goat in the middle of the town square in Gävle, Sweden. So, in the tradition of Zozobra and Burning Man, you figure that giant straw creature was made to be burned down.

Evidently there’s some disagreement about that. Ever since the first goat was erected in the 60’s, people have been driven by a compulsion to torch it. I love the city elders who stoically build it, knowing that if you build it, they will come, and they will burn it down.

Then, after years of the war between the Goat Builders and the Goat Burners, a faction decided they would make their own goat, perhaps as a decoy goat, I don’t know. The new goat was smaller and easier to demolish. The Wikipedia page has a list of the ways people found to kill the new goat. ‘“Smashed.” “Collapsed.” “Rammed with car.”)

Then the two pro-goat factions battled each other. To quote the Wikipedia page,

“There was some hostility between the Natural Science Club and the Southern Merchants, evidenced by the fact that the Natural Science Club put up a sign near their goat wishing a Merry Christmas to everyone, except the Southern Merchants.”

I know the citizens of Gävle probably take this very seriously, but I prefer to imagine it  as a merry war. Why is this not a quirky independent Christmas movie? 

Weekly Paint Progress: 11/19

This week the peonies went from this ...

... to this:

The Orange went from this ...

... to this:

Skin

A barbecue place in my area serves deep fried chicken skin as an appetizer.

”Well that’s keto,” I thought, and I ordered some.

Heaven. Two cups of tasty crunchy chicken skin.

Two days later, I made a spatchcocked chicken, and of course the real appeal there is the crispy skin. Gary elected to eat a sub sandwich instead of extra helpings of my spatchcocked chicken, so, before I packed away the leftovers, I took a fork and ate all the crispy skin. Spatchcocked skin doesn’t refrigerate well. Can’t waste it. 

I think my barbecue place should offer turkey skin for the holidays. I also think that Tyson chicken should take all the skin they strip off their skinless breast filets and package it specifically for skin appetizers.

I’ve already bookmarked some crispy skin recipes and I am not even ashamed.

X Feet Apart

I saw an image of the Georgia recount, and thought, “take away the masks and that looks just like the Florida recount in 2000.” Then I realized that while those people aren’t seated as close as you would have seen in 2000, they are not six feet apart.

The six foot rule is not being enforced in my county. Saint Louis county over the river began  enforcing mask and distancing rules as of Monday, as did my brother’s county in Albuquerque. (He described a mad rush on toilet paper and avocados.)

My county still stubbornly pouts, “Ima Amer’can, you can’t tell me whar tuh stand.” No enforcement at all, relying instead on dirty looks and boycotting. (Looking at you, Daniel’s Greenhouse and Nursery.)

Beneath the sign at the pharmacy that says “Customers are encouraged to stand six feet apart” you’ll find stickers on the floor. Spaced three feet apart.

Opportunity for favorite penis joke, again: “Why do women have poor visual spatial perception?” (Hold hands six inches apart.) “Because we keep being told this is nine inches long.”

Procedural

We’ve been watching a lot of detective shows lately. (Poirot is back in the rotation - we’re sticking with it, except for the hard pass on the After the Flood episode.)

Every episode has Japp or Poirot or someone asking “where were you at 8:17 Tuesday evening?”

This is how I imagine I would answer that question.

Poirot: “Where were you at 8:17 Tuesday evening?”

Me: “I have no idea. That’s a Belgian accent, isn’t?”

Poirot: (beams)

Me: “All right then. Am I free to go?”

Poirot: “Non! Where were you at 8:17 Tuesday evening?”

Me: “All the days just run together in the Pandemic. Tuesday evening? Curse of Oak Island is on Tuesdays at 8:00.”

Poirot: “You have zee TiVo?”

Me: “Oh, you’re right. I record it for later and watch the whole hour in twenty minutes. Let me check the Alexa app ... okay, it says I played ‘Color My World’,at 7:55. I wanted to play it on my guitar, but I didn’t remember how it goes, and I either have to have  heard it recently or I have to see the words  —“

Poirot: “Yes, yes, madame. How long did you play your guitar?”

Me: “I play my guitar until my foot falls asleep. I don’t know how long that takes.”

It takes twenty minutes.

Poirot winces at my rendition of Color My World.

He chastises me for ignoring page 1 of The Dummies Guide to Guitar which teaches correct guitar posture and appropriate guitar-playing stools.

However, he agrees I have an alibi for 8:17 Tuesday evening.

Soy Burger

McDonald’s is here to say it will be offering a vegan plant-based burger called the McPlant.

I am here to say, “been there, ate that.” I grew up on plant-based burgers. Our school district served soy burgers exclusively.

Perhaps next year McDonald’s will introduce another of my high school foods, the McRectangle:

From the press release for the McRectangle:

“There are other pizzas out there, but the McRectangle delivers our iconic taste in a stick-to-your-teeth-kind of pizza," the company said in a statement. "It’s made with a steamed, flavorless “crust”,  ketchup-based sauce, and served on a plastic tray molded to fit the classic rectangular pizza shape.”

Perhaps then McDonald’s will serve up the Nike sandwiches.

(I don’t know if my school’s Nike sandwiches were as ubiquitous as pizza ala rectangle. I don’t know why the meat and cheese subs were called Nike sandwiches - either they were imported from Japan or it was a comment on something that weighed twice what you would expect it to, like Nike tennis shoes.)

From the McNike press release:

“There are other plastic-wrapped sub sandwiches you can heat in a special convection oven until hot enough to cause third degree burns, “ the company said in a statement. “People will go wild for the blast of flavor, which is ‘Gummy,’ with notes of ‘250 degrees Fahrenheit.’”

A New Word for Me

Today I met a co-worker who described himself as a brutally frank over-sharer. 

I thought, “Ah, the distaff version of me,” — only I would be the distaff version of him. I needed the opposite.

I looked it up and he would be the “agnate” version of me. Did you all know this? Am I the only one?

 

Rewriting The Novel: From Planning to Action

Right now the novel is an overly detailed outline. I need to stop planning and start putting down dialog and descriptions, and, you know, paragraphs and the like.

I imagine I will tear right through it and then discover that I have an overly long fundamentally flawed short story. 

Calling this my practice novel allows me to ditch everything that is conventional and to try out the weird ideas that are still showing up at odd times. (The muse is not keeping me up as much anymore, but quite often I’ll watch something that influences how I want this to turn out. I have notes like, “Dark subject needs humor. Don’t want Poirot season 10. Raccoons?”)

I like the idea that it might be humorous, yet dark, because Jerry’s version was so dark and angry I want to heal it. 

This weekend I’m going to rewrite what I have from first-person heroine POV. Really glad I stopped to outline, otherwise I’d have a whole book to rewrite.

Weekly Paint Progress: 11/12

Because again .. dang it ... both projects finished simultaneously, I have two new projects to start.

With both, you will notice the foundational drawing is really messy - because I no longer care if things match the original.  I think that’s progress.

I looked for something that would have strong contrast and easy colors, like the sunflowers, for the big project.

I selected this:

Here’s the start:

The small project will be the Orange project from the glazing book.

Here’s the start of that one:

Well that’s all cattywampus. Doesn’t match at all. Somehow, that doesn’t bother me.

That’s not a bad start.

Garden Advice for New Gardeners

When I had my first garden, Mom, an accomplished gardener, gave me some advice.

“Don’t waste your money on anything in the White Flower Farms Catalog. It won’t grow even if it says it grows in our Zone. Only plant the things you can find in every nursery in your area.”

The years since have taught me the wisdom of her words. White Flower Farms is still sending me catalogs, and I throw them directly in the trash. 

If I had a child, I would pass on Mom’s wisdom, augmented with my own. While Mom said to plant only things I found in the local nurseries, I would limit that to only plants I see on my street, on my side of the street, with the same East / West exposures. Not just plant hardiness Zone 7, but Subdivision Tree Zone 7a, River Clay Zone 7a.iii.

Or weeds. Plant weeds. My Ajuga and Creeping Jenny look great. 

Ill

I had big plans for today, and then when I woke up I was profoundly exhausted. So exhausted I signed up for a sick day. I thought if I could rest for a day I might fend off any cold or illness that might be creeping up. I decided that if I was still just tired tomorrow then it was just fatigue and I needed to get on with things, just more slowly than usual.

After an hour I thought I would make myself coffee. Decaf coffee plus an ounce of cream and ten squirts of liquid sweetener. It tastes like mocha candy.

I took a sip, then a gulp. Couldn’t taste it. Uh-oh. 

I went back to the bedroom and took a sip of soda, I smelled my hands, nothing tasted or smelled especially strong.  Then I realized I should try something really strong just to be sure before I decided to go get a covid test. I remembered the sweetener I squirt in my coffee is terrifically sweet when you taste it straight, so I went back for the bottle of sweetener, planning to squirt some in my palm and lick it.

After a few “squirts” of sweetener I realized the bottle was empty. 

Review: Poirot

Poirot, Episode One:

Charming! Delightful!

Poirot, Final Episode:

Oh, my god, what happened?

Somewhere in season seven, this show took a hard turn. One moment we were figuratively tooling along with Captain Hastings in the English countryside, then the tires squealed and we were in a dark city alley heading toward family abuse and forced abortions.

“I say!” — Hastings.

(I don’t know if he said that. We never actually got to the forced abortions episode.)

Gary writhed and clutched his head so much that we bailed on season seven and we jumped ahead to ten, which caused Gary even more emotional pain, and then we just jumped ahead to the end. The last episode was excellent — just from a plot twist perspective. It was still dreadfully dark.

I read later that Agatha Christie grew to hate the Poirot character. She wrote Curtains, his swan song, and tucked it away to be published after her death, but then published it early. I know the writers adapted the Poirot stories: I wonder if they adapted them in order? I wonder if season seven corresponds to the point in Christie’s life when she had her emotional breakdown and went missing and, I surmise, turned against Hercule?

I might watch the Dark Poirot Reboot episodes without Gary. 

When I Heard

I think I was watching CNN, and they had just preached a lesson on how everyone needed to be patient while waiting for the results, because there are rules about how to call an election. Then some field reporter refreshed her phone numerous times, and the news desk began talking about how we needed to wait for results from another county, and then I blinked and they called it. The big green check mark the world was waiting for.

I switched to MSNBC, and it was there too.

I switched to FOX. No check mark. No “President-elect.”


Evidently FOX just couldn’t bring themselves to put the words on the screen. That empty FOX NEWS ALERT void stayed there for half a minute. Then they had to stamp the screen with the banner that signals their demise.

I thought I would cry with relief and joy, but I didn’t. I texted The Young People at Work. After that I told Gary through the bathroom door and he immediately advised me to stay vigilant. “This means nothing! Trump could corrupt the electoral college and stay another four years!” 

And then I got tired. (I imagine the vigilance hormone drained out of my body.) Gary got tired too. I think the country needs a good long nap.

2000 Recount Retrospective

This seems so quaint now. But you know what the difference is?

Bush and Gore were both adults, though under stress they both reverted to sulky, snippy adolescents.  In December of 2000 I felt that I would take either one of them just to get it over with.

Twenty years later we are watching a battle between an adult and a ten-year-old (and I’m being generous). 

 

When Does the Yard Sign Come Down?

I can’t remember when we took down the yard sign four years ago. Perhaps I took it down on the way in to the polls Election Tuesday. I was so confident Hilary would win.

Right now it is 6:30 in Thursday night, and few, if any, of the states that were Too Close To Call Tuesday are any Closer To Being Called. And the President just called a press conference and revealed his plan to contest the “illegal” votes.

Do I leave the sign up until there are no objections or lawsuits?

Well, I just checked, and it seems if I were running for office, I would be required to take down my sign by the second Friday after election Tuesday. 

That will be my deadline, then. He can complain until January 20, but unless Biden gives a victory speech, our sign will be down on the 13th.

Weekly Paint Progress: 11/5

This week the sunflowers went from this :

... to this finished product. Accurate yet still pretty loose. I’m pretty pleased.

Those are tiny changes. Tiny. Thistle values and a tiny green stripe in the upper right.
This is the original.

The daisy went from this:

... to this hideous mess:

This was the original.

Once again, both things are done simultaneously. I do like the sunflowers, though.

Election Update

Gary bounced into my room at four a.m., chanting “Vote! Vote! Vote!”

We got there early and still we weren’t the first. We were very close to the front of the line. Behind us the line stretched through the lot and down the lane to the main road.

We waited in line from 4:45 to 6 when the polls opened. Well. I waited until 5:45, when my lower intestine decided to cast its own vote for Trump, and sent me back home because the polling place bathroom was locked up. By the time I was done with that nonsense, Gary had voted successfully. I came back to pick him up at 6:15. It only took him two and a half hours.

I voted instead at 2. This is my line:

No one was behind me. It took me fifteen minutes total. (I might need to play the bowel card again next election cycle if Gary insists on going early.)

Now it’s Wednesday morning, and it feels like the year 2000, and we’re probably headed for the Pluto and the Supreme Court. It’s a little surreal that FOX has called a state for Biden that CNN and MSNBC have not.

I’m glad I showed up in person so my vote doesn’t end up in court. It was very distanced, safe, we all wore masks and stayed pretty far apart.

Conflict

For the past four years I have regretted that I didn’t hear the 2016 election night results from Rachel Maddow or from Stephen Colbert. Instead we got the grim news reported grimly from CNN. 

That in itself is odd, because Gary follows MSNBC, and he controls the remote for political shows.

Perhaps we heard preliminary information about the results from MSNBC and he became so enraged he flipped to CNN in denial. 

All I know is that if I follow the election on election night, on any outlet, including the Colbert Election Special, I will miss the sneak preview of MY FAVORITE GUILTY PLEASURE ... 

The return of Curse of Oak Island!

... in which millions of dollars are spent and an island is destroyed to find a handful of trash swept in by the ocean or sucked down by sinkholes.

That might end up more edifying than the election results, given that they won’t end with a Trump concession.

Or maybe they will. The neighborhood Trump signs aren’t up this year.

Harding

Our department has taken pains to keep our team United during the pandemic. They’ve invested some time in allowing us an hour of purely social time every week, usually revolving around a theme.

One week the theme was family heirlooms. I brought out my family mandolin and family photo, and mentioned my great-great-uncle being the ne’er-do-well first husband of Mrs. Warren G. Harding. 

People made ooohh sounds, which they shouldn’t have, because Warren G. was corrupt, and my great-great-uncle was a drunk, so  really that just means Fanny Harding liked the bad boys.

I said, “Don’t be too impressed, Harding was the worst president ...”

(pause)

“... Harding was one of the worst presidents we’ve ever had,” I finished. 

One more day.

Critters

I was painting in the basement when I heard a scrabbling noise. It came from the top of the basement wall.

Then I heard some some soft grunting. 

“GARY GET DOWN HERE THERE IS SOMETHING IN THE BASEMENT.”

(faintly, from upstairs) “Do I need my bat?”

“NO JUST GET DOWN HERE,” because seriously, can you picture Gary clubbing an animal to death with a bat? 

Gary came down and we both listened to the animal scrabbling and grunting. 

He said, “Well, it’s getting cold, critters are trying to get in to the house.”

I mentioned that the patio has dropped and they can walk right in between our sub floor and the basement ceiling, and he said “let them.”

I disagreed. I suspect this is not the first critter to sneak in, given the way the basement smells now. 

We never saw the basement animal, but the next day we heard the tell-tale signs of a squirrel sitting on our chimney cap. Their claws scrape, and it echoes, and you would think they were playing American Ninja Warrior in the fireplace.

I reassured Gary that every other time I’ve heard this noise I’ve looked outside and there is a squirrel sitting on the chimney cap. Not this time.

I came in. Gary shushed me. “Listen.”

Tell-tale fluttering. A bird. A invisible bird banging around in the fireplace. Gary threatened to take the ladder up to the roof and dismantle the chimney and release the bird, while I said, “It got in. It can get out.”

While he went off to research how long it takes for a bird to die of thirst, I opened and shut the flue three times, loudly.

Haven’t heard the bird since. Still, something needs to be done. Time to block off the easy access to the house.