Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Much Better Brains

Oh these brains are so much better than the other set.

But are they perfect? Maybe, or maybe not. What about the same brains in green? Already on order.

Annual insurance Nonsense

Sigh. A recap. I have mentioned this before. (Those are only the two most recent posts; I’d say there’s a yearly post on this topic.)

1. I take very a expensive MS medication. This is redundant. No such thing as a cheap MS medication.
2. I am fortunate that the manufacturer acknowledges it is outrageously expensive, and provides financial assistance for, I suppose, every human who takes their drug. (I wonder if everyone says “financial assistance” through gritted teeth.)  
3. This comes in the form of paying my $4,600 deductible. With a 200 dollar a day pill I meet my deductible on January 23rd.
4. The rest of the year I go to my standard physical, gynecologist, mammogram, and so on. No big wallow in the hospital or anything.
5. Every year each health insurance company I have had tells me they have an issue with how I am getting reimbursed by the financial assistance company.  I play their game. They don’t like me getting a check, I use the assistance company’s credit card. They don’t like the card, I go to electronic deposit.
6. This year they took a new dodge: they paid the full amount, including my part. So, since I didn’t pay the deductible, I can’t be reimbursed for the deductible. And the financial assistance certainly wont dole out cash every time I get antibiotics or get a UTI. Well, bad example, but you know what I mean. I’m still better off than I’d be without insurance, and I doubt I’ll even come close to meeting my deductible, BUT STILL.

When I realized what was going on, I took one trip around the phone circuit: specialty pharmacy transferred me to the insurance who transferred me to the regular pharmacy who transferred me to, yes, the specialty pharmacy. 

I called my assistance coordinator, who said, “Wait until three months from now and see what they do the next time you get your meds.”

I planned to do that, all the while avoiding all doctors just out of spite, but then my brother tracked down the number for the insurance complaint line in my state.

It was the quickest pickup of any phone call, and the shortest. She said:

“Insurance companies started doing that last year. There’s no law against it. Nothing you can do. “

It was disappointing news, but I loved that she actually ANSWERED my QUESTION. 

You win this round, insurance company.

Gary’s Safe

I am generally cranky when Gary wakes me up, which he did right before midnight. He barged into my room, which is my room because I was thrown out of the marital bed for keeping him awake with my “energy,” and said, “Well I’ve got mine.”

”Got your what? Why are you waking me —“

”Vaccine appointment.” He held up his iPad.

That woke me up. I went from muttering into my pillow to sitting on the edge of the bed.

He said, “Oh no, it’s tomorrow. I can’t go tomorrow. That’s too soon.”

”Too SOON?”

“I was going to sleep tomorrow. And I want to wait until it’s warmer and do a drive-through vaccination.”

To summarize what I said in response, it was multiple iterations of, “So you’re going to put the rest of us at risk so that you don’t have to get out of bed?” and that seemed to convince him.

He said it was a 40 minute wait, but people were distanced, and he got the Moderna Vaccine. I feel I plumped up just from the the unwinding of every muscle. I might have gone boo-ii-ing.

Weekly Paint Progress: 2/25

This week the dog went from this:

... to this: 

I wanted to compare it with the earlier dog.

I like the new one better.

I am going back to the guided books. I noticed I do have a book entirely on Flowers. I seem to have painted the section on Peonies. Bunch of peonies in a white pitcher. Did not stick.

The next thing is square, so it will need to be small, as I have no large square canvases.

I am this far:

The Little Things

These things have pleased me lately because I anticipate a bad situation, and then find it has not happened. 

• I open the garage door, expecting a cold dark garage, and find it is a cold illuminated garage, because we always keep the lights on in the garage for this very reason. Somehow even after thirty years I still think the garage will be dark, just like after a year of quarantine I still think every work meeting will be in person.
• I open the dishwasher, expecting a ten minute chore with pots and sorting all the silverware, and Gary has compulsively run the dishwasher with, and this is true, three forks, one spoon, two coffee mugs and a bowl.

I know both of these things are very wasteful for the environment, but the burst of joy I get is worthwhile, and as I have said, we have more than made up for it by 1) never using plastic baby diapers and 2) never washing cloth baby diapers.

German Schmaltz

My brother’s surgical scar from this past summer still has not healed, and interestingly, the wound specialist blames Dave’s fat. It’s fighting to get out and is tearing apart where they stitched up his muscles. 

“Wait,” I said, “your muscles are below the fat. It’s muscles, fat, skin.” I thought back to every raw chicken I’ve met.

”Not with Germans. There was a House episode with about it. Germans have fat, muscle, skin.”

I’ve looked at House transcripts and I can’t find this. Also, we aren’t German. Also, Gary’s drum-tight German belly backs this up. Also, I want to buy a raw German chicken now.

I was so taken in by his theory that I looked things up and we are both right.

So now some of his visceral fat is going to be scooped out, evidently, and a new wound made, but now I’m wondering if he will have some kind of pit and if the extra skin could just be lapped over in a double-breasted fashion to keep all the blood and fat securely inside.

Why don’t I see visceral fat in poultry, though? I suppose it’s all scraped out with the hearts and livers, but then where does it go?

It does explain why I can lose ten pounds and look exactly the same, though. 

Sad Little Brains

Well, I have very poor visual-spatial perception (I think that’s evident from the paintings) and the brain soap I bought is just too small for the mini-skull.

Larger brain soap is on order, though. 

Birds

We’ve had an epic snow here in the Midwest, the kind of snow that makes the raccoons stay in torpor, so the squirrels and birds have been eating food that doesn’t smell of raccoon paws. It’s very popular.

We’ve discovered two interesting things about birds. 

First, even though we keep a heater in the ground-level bird-bath in winter, our birds won’t use it to bathe when it’s below freezing. Instead, they bathe in the snow and sometimes leave lovely little wing patterns. 

Second, they are as cute af when they drink from said heated bird-bath. They:

1. Consider drinking
2. Poke their beaks in the water 
3. Come up with a beakful, tip their heads back and gulp, and this kills me:
4. Smack their lips. Well, beaks. Clack clack clack.
5. Start over again.

Gary’s Dance

I made a mistake this past Thursday. I left the guest room door open when I was in a Zoom meeting, and Gary came home and poked his head in.

I gave him a barely perceptible nod, because I was paying attention to my meeting, and I am a professional.

He began a sinuous dance. He waved his arms like a hula girl. I bit my lower lip hard.

He began flipping his long white hair and I lost it, and I reached to turn off my camera just as my boss asked, “Ellen, are you in some kind of distress?”

And then, everyone had to meet Gary, only, no one really met Gary. They met Retired Gary. All I could think of was how furious Work Gary would have been if I had tried that. 

Wee Addition to the Medical Bathroom

I have made the bathroom into my own 25 year art project. You saw the addition of the epithelial cells chart. 

I thought, I just need one more thing. A speculum.

I did find this festive rainbow speculum ...

... but I checked the dimensions and given the shelf it’s going on, it’s just too big. (But we can say that about all specula, can we not?)

But, if you look at the left side of the shelf below, there is tiny speculum on a stand.

It’s a wee speculum key chain, literally off the chain. 

And look, it even opens if you need to do a Pap smear on, say, a squirrel.

Maybe that’s too big for a squirrel. 

Bring me a lady raccoon, then.

Weekly Paint Progress: 2/18

This week the peonies went from this:

... and then they took a really surprising turn and went to this:

... when they were originally this:

Dark, thick peonies. No more peonies ever. What next? Maybe a giant croquet ball? A cylinder? A box?

The dog went from this:

... to this, and it’s perplexing. So dark.

Okay This Makes Two New Buzzwords

I was in a department meeting when a visiting speaker said, “I mean, that’s what’s you expect. It’s table steaks.”

Then she went on, but I was still hung up in this new phrase. Table steaks? Like ... table wine? Kind of a lower-grade steak you get a restaurant, not a fine steak/wine, but a table steak/wine?

And OF COURSE I had to go into the department group chat and say, “Did she just say table steaks? What does that mean?”

Of course, it’s some poker reference. Table stakes. I suppose it’s the expected ante or something? I don’t know. All I know is that add this to the Oregon Trail references and 1) I don’t know what anyone is saying at work anymore and 2) I have heard it used twice now in two days.

I’m going to quietly post this photo in the chat every time I hear it from now on.

Rewriting the Novel: Writing a Treatment

A friend who writes knows I am working on the novel, and offered a peer critique, so I am first presenting her with a ... a précis? A summary? It would be a treatment if it were fifty pages long, but it is only five. 

And wow, if you want to highlight how puerile your novel is,  whittle it down to five pages.

On the other hand, it has solved my problem with the last third, which is the whitest part of the whiteboard, where the outline just says “things get worse then better.” ”Seems that if you push your imagination past “then something happens” into a paragraph then it starts to fall into place.

The summary made evident that this book is blatant therapy. I used some form of the word “abandon” on every page. I’ll have to fight my instincts and delve. Ugh.

Oregon Trail

Okay, there’s a new buzzword at work. Or buzz phrase. Or buzz cultural reference. 

It’s the Oregon Trail computer game. 


It was designed in the seventies, but it didn’t become a popular technique for teaching the  perils of the Oregon Trail until the Apple 2e version came out, just a few years after I graduated high school.

Instead, my history teacher taught us about the Oregon Trail with a five-day long slide presentation of photos he’d taken of the trail.  I can tell you the one thing that I remember: whenever he flipped to a slide of a lonely grave, and there were many, he would say, “This person probably died of cholera. And how do we get cholera, kids?”

”BY DIGGING YOUR WELL TOO CLOSE TO SOMEONE ELSE’S OUTHOUSE,” we would shout. 

Clearly there was cholera, and, as you see above, for the younger folks, dysentery  — but does anyone remember anything else about the Oregon trail?

The game certainly made an impression on the young(er) people at work: it is THE metaphor for a journey. And they can’t talk about it without making funny dysentery references.

“Cholera,” I whisper to myself.

Continuing on With the Skip Principle

Skipping Thanksgiving and Christmas was vital for getting through the holidays. Evidently it worked so well that we are also skipping the observation of the Feast of Saint Valentine. 

It’s interesting to me how Gary’s expression of love have changed so much of late. Gone are the days of 21 gifts for my 21st birthday. Gone are the days of 40 roses for my 40th birthday. I tell myself it is because he is secure in my love.

But then, we did recently have The Unfortunate Croissant Incident, in which he brought home an unsolicited chocolate croissant and I refused to take a bite. I was not aware this meant I no longer love him, but evidently, it does. It turned into a whole production.

(I would get a chocolate croissant and take a bite just for him, but I already did that the next day.)

Been a Year, Was Bound to Happen Sometime

Last night it was 3:30 am and I hadn’t been able to sleep yet, so I just decided to get my work  laptop and start working. I worked until oh, 11:30, when I needed to have an urgent video conference with my coworker Benjamin.

Frankly I am astonished this hasn’t happened before today. Here I am looking all professional.

NO zoom background masking the fact I am propped up in bed.

NO attention paid to hair or eyebrows.

NO attempt even to put on a heavy denim shirt to stay braless but modest.

”Benjamin,” I said, “You are a gentleman. I have just realized I am in my pajamas and you have said nothing.” 

He was gracious and demurred in some way and we moved on. I just stayed in my pajamas: the damage was done.

Basement Life Hack or Bad Idea?

It’s been hard painting in the basement now that the weather is below twenty degrees. I’ve got a space heater (it’s okay, it’s not a fire-setting space heater) and it just isn’t doing the job (probably because it’s not a fire-setting space heater).

Back upstairs, I got in to bed the other night and plugged in my heating pad to heat my feet, which were oddly cold, and thought, wouldn’t it be neat if they had full body sized heating pads? I eventually realized they do and they are called electric blankets.

I am unfamiliar with electric blankets: they were not used in our house when I was growing up (too new-fangled and suspect). I certainly don’t want to be bundled up in an electric blanket post-menopause, but it occurred to me I could lay an electric blanket under my chair in the basement and it would be like radiant flooring. Toasty on the feet, and then the heat would rise. And the basement hasn’t flooded lately (even though there were some torrential rains) so no danger of shorting everything.

I am certain there is some reason this is a bad idea. Do people do this? Use an electric blanket for a heated floor? Is that a bad plan?

Weekly Paint Progress: 2/11

This week the peonies went from this:

... to this, which I hate. No more peonies ever after I lighten things up on the left. And maybe knock down the intensity. It looks like a couch. I like the top right corner and that is it.

Also, as I was painting, my big easel decided to slowly swoon backward to the floor. I caught it as if we were dancing the tango and it went in to a low dip. I pulled her back up and re-tightened some screws.

The dog went from this:

... to this:

Add ellipses to peonies on the list of things I can’t paint. I like the scribble glassware but that’s still not the right shape.

Happily, I think that one will be done sooner than the eternal peonies.

Human Petri Dish

From NPR, February 5th:

An immune suppressed man in Boston caught Covid and didn’t get over it. He couldn’t, because the virus kept mutating inside his body. They sequenced the genomes while the poor man took five months to die, and they found twenty different mutations. Now that the global mutations are in the news, this man’s story is being told.

Even if you don’t read the link, go there for the graphic that looks like Elmo is dangling like a bunch of grapes and Cookie Monster is trying to eat his hand.

 

Extra Bonus Impeachment

President Trump is being tried in the Senate today. Of, course, he won’t be convicted. For every seditious thing he said, he said the opposite, because that’s what he does. And his lawyers will be justified in saying the entire Senate should recuse themselves because they are biased, having been in fear for their lives because of what he said. The victims are his jury.

Instead, their argument is going to be “He’s not president anymore: you can’t impeach him.” So, then have the Capitol police wrestle him to the ground? Arrest him as a citizen for the same thing? 

As long as no one riots again this won’t be a story. I don’t want a story. I do want a ring of National Guardsmen around the capitol, though.

That’s All They Needed to Say

I swear, last week I was watching the debate over Marjorie Scott Greene staying in her special House committees, and I keep hoping just one Congressperson would throw the prepared notes in the air and shout:

JEWISH? SPACE? LASERS?

... and stomp off. 

Why was there a debate? Why wasn’t she evicted entirely, immediately? If there were ever a need for a recall election this would be it.

2000 a Week

According to Gary, the car mechanic asked Gary how far he drove a week. 

Gary answered, “Two thousand miles.”

I am not good with math, but even I knew this was wrong, and I questioned him.

This tells you all you need to know about Gary: he argued with me, doubled down on it, questioned my logic and my ability to  multiply by two because it was a round trip, and then said there was a decimal point on the odometer he didn’t account for, then when I said “still, even two hundred miles is insane for the one trip you make a week,” he said, “I am not having this discussion anymore.”

Buffer

My brother said one of his physical therapists had recommended using a car buffer on his back for his pain. 

It sounds odd, but it seems this Ryobi buffer is just the ticket for any big muscle pain. It’s heated and the oscillation gives a good massage.

Dave raved about it so much that I got one too.

Somehow he has a setup where he can jam it between some couch cushions and get relief, but I needed to have Gary cooperate. (“Buff me, baby.”)

Lessons learned: next time take off the denim shirt pre-buff. That little sheepskin thing at the bottom is blue now.  (I thought the shirt might be shinier after, but it is not.)

It really did melt all the back and shoulder pain away, but sadly, replaced it with a massive headache. Don’t know if that’s going to happen every time.

Bumped Again

Well, maybe not “bumped” again, given that I’m really just clarifying the definitions of the vaccination tiers.

It seems that in Missouri:

• If you take an immune-suppressant so you don’t reject your organ transplant, then you move up in the list.
• If you take an immune-suppressant because you have an auto-immune disease, then you don’t. 

Do I want to know how they split that hair? I’m imagining the debate. “We’ve invested lots of time installing those kidneys: those people can’t die. Those auto-immune people are already just running out the clock.” 

More likely, there are just too many people with MS, RA, and all the other diseases that require that you knock out your immune system, compared to how many people have had an organ upgrade — sorry, compared to how many people have had live-saving organ transplants. 

And then on top of that, CNN has decided to put this number in my face every day just to rub it in.

Weekly Paint Progress: 2/5

This week the peonies went from this:

... to this:

Just details on the right. Really subtle. And I noticed I skipped entire flowers, so they had to be whited in.

The dog bank went from this:

.. to this:

I was really surprised at how “off” my first sketch was.

Virus Mental State

I’m perplexed by these virus mutations. I heard an explanation that we are getting more mutations because the virus has ‘realized’ that to survive it needs to stop killing its hosts. It needs to be more like the common cold: more transmission, less death. 

Now, I understand natural selection: the moth that blends in with the sooty deposits in Victorian London doesn’t get eaten and then there are more and more of those moths.

I suppose my problem is that pundit/scientists are suggesting that the viruses got together in a staff meeting and said, “It appears that our London branch is showing a high success rate. London, what’s your secret?” Then the London virus says “I’ve decided to adopt a ‘commuter’ strategy: I use the host for transportation. It’s not as satisfying as the hospitalization strategy but I think it’s better for the brand long-term.”

Viruses are scary enough without giving them rational thought and free will. 

New Decor

Friend #2 was out and about in The World, and spied something she thought I might like.

She sent me a photo, and I mulled it over, and called the store the next time they were open. 

I made the actual purchase over the phone, and only had to step two paces in to the store, point at the rolled up item, and back out. I didn’t even breathe.

And now the medical bathroom contains that chart on the back wall of the tub:

Of course that meant the rest had to be rearranged.

I’m tickled the three dimensional man gets to look at his twin. We’ve still got some display space by the ceiling.

 

Amazon Delivery

Usually this is how Amazon deliveries are at my house:

1. Someone gets a soda or a snack and passes the front door on the way.
2. That someone looks out the front door window.
3. If there is a box on the porch, that someone shrieks “TREEEEATS!” and gets to open the box as the other person watches. 
4. The person who ordered the treat gets to play with the treat first.

It’s almost always Gary who has ordered the treat, and usually it isn’t a treat for me, so my role in this dance is to do steps 1-3. 

It’s such a habit now that I do it even when Gary’s not around. The other day I peeked out the window and saw no treats, but I did see an Amazon van parked on the street.

When I the driver started up our driveway I opened the door, reached out just my right arm and just made grabby “gimme” hand gestures. 

It made the driver, laugh, anyway, and afterward I did compulsively say “treeeeats” quietly just to myself.