Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Review: The Little Foxes

Two things struck me about the Bette Davis classic The Little Foxes.

1. There were no foxes.
2. I knew I had watched the movie a long time ago, and I especially remembered the staircase scene.  But I was confused seeing it this time, because the staircase was way smaller and darker than I remembered.
   
   Turns out what I remembered was the Carol Burnett parody.

Rewriting the Novel: Weirdness

When I was painting the birdbath I kept thinking, “These are the craziest colors. I am so far afield. These colors are way too bright, too exaggerated.” And then come to find out, they weren’t too strange. 

That’s how I am feeling about the book. What I am writing is crazy exaggerated stuff.
For example, our heroine has fallen on hard times and is currently living inside the steeple of the church and sun-baking tortillas on the back of a metal Turkish Baths sign and then winging them at children. As you do.

I don’t know if that is weird and painful or imaginative and interesting. If I use Hemingway as my standard, it’s way weird. But then I’ll notice something that has an element of weird and it seems acceptable.

Last weekend I watched some film noir, heavy on the noir. It was Scarlet Street, with Edward G. Robinson. Part of it is set in an apartment formerly rented by an artist who drew on the walls. He didn’t wing any tortillas, in fact all you see of him is his art graffiti, but it was weird, and I took comfort in that.

(I recommend Scarlet Street. I peeked at the original French version, La Chienne, which I should have preferred. I admit I liked what the Hayes office did with the end. It was surprising. One could say weird.)

Weekly Paint Progress: 7/29

Done with the bird baths. 

This was last week:

Here is this week:

This is the original:

I finally like it. The slant of the light in the morning is all off, and I never felt like I was getting the colors right, but now that I look at it side by side it isn’t too bad.

Who Am I to Criticize

I recently watched the Covid news, and of course, condemned the legions of unmasked virus-deniers who live in the southwest corner of my state.  

Right after that I took a hot shower, which my first neurologist told me I should never do, and then I ate a tasty lunch of sous-vide pork loin, even though the sous-vide booklet says that the sous-vide is not for the elderly or the immune-compromised. So I am ignoring scientific medical advice, no better than a Branson Missouri indoor go-kart operator ready to meet Jesus.

I suppose the difference is that mine is the only life I’m risking. Still, I can’t criticize their defiance until I toss the sous vide and start taking cold showers.

Cleveland Indians

How was this ever okay? The term Indian became controversial in my adult life, somehow — I mean, we knew we didn’t live in India — but the grinning mascot could not ever have been okay. Could it? 

I like the new name better … but, couldn’t the cartoon fastball have used more work?

It’s less offensive, sure, but it’s no Cardinal’s logo.

(Cool logos, even though the intertwined letters were stolen from the Catholic church.)

Overbought

I personally don’t like to eat the same thing two days in a row, but Gary delights in it. Given that Mr. S___ will eat no meat, and his wife will eat no carbs, we share no meals. I’m back to cooking home meals for myself on the weekends while he assembles ornate salads for himself. Each salad is a science experiment: he begins with the standing hypothesis (X% lettuce, X% feta, 1/4 cup salad dressing), eats that for two days, and tweaks it slightly on the next round. He has lost sixteen pounds doing this.

So this means Gary’s grocery list is only tomatoes, lettuce, croutons, cheeses, and two sides: cottage cheese and yogurt. Every week he tells me how much of each he needs, and for some reason last week I didn’t notice that he ordered two week’s worth of food, when he already had one week of food. 

I spent last weekend moving my food into the garage fridge, and sorting his 21 yogurts by date so nothing spoiled.

I also did this:

Note how certain bags are marked “OLD” in Sharpie. The font I used was Sarcasm Sans Serif.

Gary countered by not eating the old first, and then yesterday he went through the OLD bags and selected the one green leaf that was not rotted and incorporated it into a special Heirloom Lettuce salad.

Today he says he is off bag salads entirely. He wants to eat his cheese and tomatoes and dressing on a bed of something else. Spinach? Yeccch. Corn? Yeccch. Green Pepper? Yeecch. I suggested he augment his salad dressing with a purée of cheese and tomatoes and eat soup every day.

I think he’ll do a base of artichoke hearts and hearts of palm. He’ll be back to step one of the salad experiment but I think he likes that.

Olympics

I must have been partially asleep during the Olympic opening ceremonies. I “remember” these things, and yet they can’t be real:

The announcer said that the Winter Olympics are in “just a few months” and I thought, “The Winter Olympics are in just a few months and no one is canceling them?” But it’s true, if they start in February, technically they are in six months, right?

There was an ad for a weird all-electric car that talks to you, and Gary said, “That is our next car,” and I thought, “That is our current car,” but ours doesn’t use the floor mats to indicate who it is addressing.

Then Gary turned the Parade of Nations into the Parade of Mask-Shaming, with particular contempt for Nose-Exposers. 

A globe of drones appeared in the sky:

… and then they didn’t show it flying away, or exploding, or turning into a giant virus, or else they did and I was asleep.

I was particularly perplexed by the end of the ceremony, when they had celebrities sing the song Imagine in English (at least the parts I was awake for). Huh, I thought, shouldn’t the celebrity from each country sing in their native language?

And then, worse, they sang the Olympic Anthem in English. I began to suspect that this isn’t an “International” Olympic Committee. I mean, I know NBC pre-tapes the opening ceremony and edits it to focus on the English version of speeches, and the First Lady, and so on, but did they sing the Olympic Anthem in every language and then just air the English one? Or they might have and I just slept through it.

Foot Update

I spent two weeks with a swollen red foot, after I traumatized it with Mom’s sundial, before I made a doctor’s appointment. I just kept waiting for it to stop being red swollen and painful, and I didn’t, so clearly something was wrong.

That must have done the trick, because the day after I made the appointment, the swelling went down, the next day the redness left but I still had a bony lump, then yesterday I thought, “What’s this doctor’s appointment on my calendar? Is it the gynecologist?” I thought that when it was less than 24 hours before my appointment.

Too late to cancel, I thought, but evidently not. This makes twice though that I have placed out at the GP. Can’t make a habit of that. Good to know the appointment placebo effect is strong if I need it later.

Rewriting the Novel: Slow but Steady

This week I made up pages of predictable garbage, but I did it consistently. 

The words were still slow.

Saturday: 1 hour = 1.5 pages 
Sunday: 15 minutes = one sentence (Literally, this sentence: “I wondered if the stove was still on.” It means more in context: there’s been an explosion and gas is screaming out of an oil well.)
Monday: 25 minutes = half a page
Tuesday: 30 minutes = one 1/4 page paragraph  plus 30 minutes = half page
Wednesday: One hour = two pages
Thursday: 90 min = 3 pages 

Oh my GOD I’ve settled into a glacial pace of one page every half hour. And that’s a 400 word page (double spaced).

*Does research*

Oh, dear, that’s below average, like 25% below average. I don’t care. It’s not like I’m writing to put food on the table. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 7/22

This week the morning went from this:

… to this:

The noon version went from this:

… to this:

The evening went from this:

… to this:

One more swing and they’ll be done. 

Apologies Robert Browning

Grow old along with me?

The worst is yet to be

The aches and pains from which the quarrels are made;

Our bile grows worse each year

We pass the pain to those held dear,

Once wife, now nurse, with thinning sympathy.

====

Gary doesn’t deal well with illness. Sympathy doesn’t make him feel better, what I think makes him feel better is expelling the venom. I’m always going to be younger, and therefore healthier, and therefore always the nurse and always the target.

That works fine if I’m not filled with bile myself. How do two sickly people stay married? Do they? 

====

P. S. I have a particular hatred today for Rabbi Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra and the poem that bears his because my left foot, the best foot of all my feet, is still jacked up by its encounter with the Grow Old Along With Me sundial.

Fox Conflict

Fox was busy last week.

He chased what I imagine was a bunny:

He relaxed enough to sit down and have raccoons sneak up on him:

He did a little side step in the yard after a squirrel knocked the camera off kilter:

Speaking of wildlife …

News channels and People Magazine have had much to say about how this raccoon looks embarrassed after firefighters caught him raiding a house.

That raccoon isn’t embarrassed. He doesn’t like the light. It’s night time, he says, why is it so bright in here? And also, where are the big piles of nuts, both shelled and unshelled?

Poor baby.

Stimulus

So, okay, people with kids now get an extra $250-$350 per child as a tax credit because of the pandemic. That’s a good thing. Don’t begrudge that a bit.

But, why? It would make sense if unemployed parents got the extra cash, because I know kids are expensive. But these are working parents. I’d say it was so you could get daycare, but that’s nowhere near enough money for daycare.

All I can think is that it’s some social-engineering-dystopian-scheme to pay people to re-populate the earth that’s been semi-decimated from the pandemic. Fewer people, fewer consumers to have confidence? Fewer Amazon purchases, hence more global depression? 

There has to be a bottom line reason here: Uncle Sam doesn’t just feel sorry for Mom and Dad.

Review: Detour De Force

Friday I was playing Code Monkey by Jonathon Coulton on repeat at Maximum Alexa Volume just so I could hear this line over and over again:

“Code Monkey think/ maybe manager / wanna write / goddamned / login page himself”

… but then the new Barenaked Ladies CD Detour de Force landed on my porch.

Overall, 14 tracks. I am only guessing about themes here, but:

3 Songs about being a child: Man Made Lake, Big Back Yard, Live Well

2 Songs about being in a band: Good Life, Roll Out

2 Songs criticizing Current Dim-witted Fascist Society: Flat Earth, New Disaster 

3 Vague Worrisome Songs about Relationships: Flip, Here Together, God Forbid

2 Songs Complaining about Suburban Life: Bylaw, The National Park

2 Songs Remaining That Sound Like Other Songs : Paul Chambers which sounds like a 60’s LP my Dad would have, Internal Dynamo (which sounds like Liz Phair on Exile In Guyville)

I couldn’t find one typo. I thought there was one (b-apostrophe-y), but it’s a reference to BNL evidently hiring the tour manager away from Great Big Sea.

My favorite song is Man Made Lake, for the lyrics and progression, and then after that New Disaster, primarily for the rhyme “Stay tuned for scary monsters … But first a word from sponsors.”

My very favorite line overall is from Good Life: “It comes to pass / it doesn’t come to stay.” 

Salad

Gary speaks well when you get him going. Bring up Trump, he can rattle on in pentameter for an hour without pausing for breath.

In fact, he did that last night, not quite for an hour but for at least twenty minutes, when I interrupted him to ask, “Did you eat anything today?”

Indignant. “You interrupted me! Let me finish my thought!”

”Sorry, but you weren’t winding down, and I was thinking about dinner.”

He said, ”I had …” (waving hand at refrigerator) “one of those round bowl-y things.” 

“What?”

Gary got more annoyed, threw his hands up in the air. “Bowl! White round bowl-y thingy!”

All he’s eaten of late, in a white bowl or not, are salads made of 25% dressing, feta cheese, and croutons, and chicken, and scraps of lettuce. 

I said, “A saaaa … llaaaad?”  I am afraid I pronounced it just that way, slowly, two distinct syllables.

”Yes! A saaaaaaaa … lllaaaaad,” he hissed, and then I laughed for a good long time. He laughed too. Eventually. 

Rewriting the Novel: a Step Back and a Step Forward

I’ve taken some time outlining the plot for the second half, no longer does “some stuff happen.” 

It’s been confusing just because I’ll be in outline mode, and again characters will begin having conversations while I’m trying to make plans, so I have to duck out of my plotting Word document, make a new conversation document, write up what they’re saying, which is usually just stupid and inane because let’s be frank, they aren’t real. The inane comes out of my head. (Blame the Inane on Mame, boys.) Then I save it and by that time Word has gone into the doggy crawl mode that happens after an hour and a half and it’s just a pain to use.

However, at least things are happening, particularly this week.

Sunday: one half hour, 3/4ths of a page
Monday: ninety minutes, 3 pages 
Wednesday: ninety minutes, 1 and 1/2 pages (but part of that was going back to plotting)
Thursday, 45 minutes, 1/2 page, but it was all action, no dialog.

So if that averages to 1.5 pages per hour, 150 more pages to go, 100 more hours? That’s just like two and a half work weeks, or spread out an hour a day that’s three more months. And then I’ll have a draft so I can revise every word.

What’s inspired me? My bedside table has Mom’s travel journal and Jerry’s version of the book. It seems I should genetically be able to do this.

Weekly Paint Progress: 7/15

This week was all about the mulch.

The morning view went from this:

… to this:

The noon view went from this:

… to this:

The evening view went from this:

… to this:

Bitter Pouty Post

It feels as if all my friends are going on vacation, meeting up, going to Hawaii. 

Enjoy your Prague Summer, I say, we’re going to be locked back down when it gets cold. I don’t see any way to get the US sufficiently vaccinated. And now this Delta variant is causing new cases in half the states, so the virus is not only back on the upswing but 1,000 times more communicable. In fact, Saint Louis has already gone backward and re-instituted the indoor mask mandate.

On top of that, this week Pfizer said the shots we got last spring are losing effectiveness, after which they they said oopsies, and apologized to Dr. Fauci, and then clarified the immunosuppressed could still get a booster maybe, and thank you.

Evidently Biden wants people going door to door dispensing shots, but I don’t see that resulting in anything but door-to-door gun displays. What might work is the 1917 model: arrest anyone without a mask. 

It’s sour grapes, I know, and small-minded. You people having fun, you will pay, says the shut-in. (Except for the people in New Zealand, you have fun, you made rules and followed them like rational people.)

Mom Speaks Again From Beyond the Grave

Yesterday I found an old 1950s spiral notebook filled with Mom’s handwriting. It is titled CHI OR DIE, and seems to be an account of a train trip she took to Chicago when she was twenty, along with her sister Dolores and four of Mom’s friends. 

This is one of three travel journals I have uncovered in my messy house: Dad’s from the trip to D.C. during the bicentennial, Carleen’s trip to Garden of the Gods and Hollywood, and now Mom’s train trip to Chicago. They have one thing in common: they detail every meal and most prices.

On the train Dolores had hamburger and lettuce and peaches and milk, Carleen had a Hostess cupcake, Mom had peaches and milk and pickles and coffee. Nancy freeloaded off everyone else. Mom then adds, “Thus fortified we hit Chicago singing vociferously, ‘We are Chicago bound, they’ll be no heebie - jeebies hangin’ ‘round.’”

That’s the best part. Mom’s writing at twenty is like my writing at 58. “Thus fortified.” I would write that today.

She continues “next morning at the Hoosier Room on Wabash I had scrambled eggs, 2 slices of toast and butter with strawberry jelly in a little plastic container which was darling and two cups of hot chocolate in a little silver pot. 64 cents.”

 
Today that would cost nine dollars and no one thinks the plastic container is darling. 

The six went places I know from my trips to Chicago (Navy Pier, Hull House, Buckingham Fountain) , and places that may still exist under another name (Hoboland, the “various foreign sections”). Dolores chastised Mom in Chinatown for stepping out of the line of people rubbing Buddha’s belly and rubbing the “belly” of a large planter pot instead. 

They visited the museums, where they “ate in some motley room and everyone had chili, hot dogs, hot watermelon, sour Orangeade and other rubble.”

They were unable to get tickets to see Carol Channing in “Wonderful Town,” so instead they went to a restaurant called Berghoff’s, where they all had roast turkey dinner ($2.25) except for Dolores who had roast goose (price unknown). Clearly they enjoyed it more than they would have enjoyed Carol Channing: they made friends of all the waitstaff, the bus boy offered to give them all a ride to Decatur, and Mom spoke German and French to all. They had a good time as it was “a very classy restaurant.” 

(I checked in with Berghoff’s and they survived the pandemic and not only that, they re-opened the restaurant for business on July 12, 2021, they very day I found Mom’s travel journal.)

The details go on. They upgrade to a better room with foam-rubber pillows for $4. They visit North Shore beach where Mom waded in up to the waist of her pedal-pushers. That day ends with a wrong turn and a bad neighborhood and a streetcar driver who was — and I quote — “insolent.” 

The next day they take a bus ride to Lincoln Park, where they saw a statue of Goethe, and I wouldn’t mention because it got less detail than her waffle breakfast (again at the Hoosier Room), but I recall that once when Gary and I came back from Chicago and Lincoln Park, she asked if we’d seen the statue of Goethe.

Because that’s the kind of classy German-speaking waist-wading rubble-eating person she was. 

Back row: Nancy, Flo, Carleen
Front row: Claudette, Mom, Dolores

Steve at Work

Sometimes you meet just delightful people when you are working.

Take Steve.

Only photo of Steve I have, appropriately

He changed departments about six years ago, and we’d catch up in the cafeteria, but it wasn’t the same as working every day with Steve, because Steve was hilarious on a daily basis, and I was lucky enough to sit next to him in all the seating charts. 

I didn’t know him at all until the first time I emailed him. His immediate reply was “Stop emailing me.”

Just for a moment, he tricked me. I was concerned that I had stepped over some line during the month I had worked by him, but no, that was just deadpan Steve. 

People at work were gobsmacked last week to hear Steve at Work had died, and then surprised again to hear it wasn’t from Covid, but instead from an aggressive bone cancer that took four months to progress from “a toothache” to death.

So here, I give you the Steve at Work Blog Compendium dating back to 2009. He read the blog and at times commented under an alias.

The boldfaced posts below actually star Steve, and below that are the ones in which Steve is a supporting player. I want to use them all as a reference when I get old and don’t remember my friend at the next desk.

Steve plays a prank

Steve surprises everyone

Steve eats at a food truck  

More Steve:

Steve rescues Late Mom’s book

Steve recommends a restaurant

Steve shaves his head too hastily

Steve eats odd things for breakfast

Steve steps up and eats his odd breakfast publicly 

Steve laughs at my idiocy

Steve tries to correct my idiocy

Steve makes a job aid

Steve stays quiet about the baby

Steve recommends The Woody

Steve gives breaking D.B. Cooper news

Steve organizes a dining event

Steve mocks two idiotic things I did in one conversation 

Steve gives breaking Hitler news

Steve is a target of soup cans

Steve and I bet

Steve baits the government 

 

 

 

 

Gary Drives

Gary had not yet embraced the Mini, so Friday afternoon I took him down quiet country roads and busy city streets to a spot ten miles away so he could drive back, only, per Gary, “I am not taking the Mini on this dusty podunk two-lane country road” and “I am not taking the Mini on this busy stop-and-go two-lane city street.”

I threatened him with driving in an abandoned parking lot like a teenager and he agreed to switch places with me and drive home. He was as tense as a cat going into a bath when he pulled out into the city traffic, but then he accelerated and you could see him unwind a little bit. The stop-and-go traffic gave him plenty of chances to accelerate and unwind until he was neutered drunk cat in a sunspot level of relaxed and called the 10 and 2 position on the steering wheel, “where the steering boobies are.”

He didn’t want to floor it on the country road back home, and he doesn’t like the extra power you get in Sport mode, but he was talking about the car when he woke up the next day so I am encouraged.

Campsite

I apologize if I have mentioned this image before, but if I have, I cannot find it on the blog. I recently ordered a duplicate of my Junior Girl Scout guide to connect with it again.

The image below is all I remember of being a Junior Girl Scout.

It’s the image of the ideal campground. I was hypnotized by this image. The pulley system with the soap on one end and the washcloth on the other. The clever way the backpack and first aid kit are lashed to the tree. And a tent just for your sorted firewood? Come on.

I needed to get this image because I want the heroine of Jerry’s book to have a similar pulley-intensive cunning setup during the dark night of her soul.

I am glad I was absorbed by that page and not the disturbingly sexist one below.

“You make yourself useful not only at home and among your friends but wherever you see a chance to help. Ask yourself what you can do to help at home. Can you set the table, wash dishes, make your own bed? Is there something special you can do to help your father?” 

Liiiiiike … get him a beer?  Help with the taxes? 

Review: The Heiress

I campaigned enthusiastically to watch this movie with Gary as part of his effort to find a movie his mom will like. I had fond yet vague memories of loving it, particularly the ending when - well - I didn’t quite remember. 

[spoilers, with additional spoilers for scenes that exist only in Gary’s imagination]

So, two men are awful to Olivia de Havilland, and she has tremendous scenes in which she destroys them. Was your father mean to you? Watch the scene when she confronts her father. Do you have abandonment issues? Watch the last scene. Is your self-esteem based on knowing that other people were wrong about you? Watch the whole movie.

Gary watched the movie and the said, “Well we can’t show that to Mom, because of the suicide.”

”What suicide?”

”Well they make it obvious she’s going to kill herself. She said she’s never going to embroider anything ever again.”

”Yes, she’s abandoning introspection and is going to live life to the fullest.”

”Oh no, can’t you see, she’s going upstairs to kill herself.”

I mean, she does look determined, I’ll give him that … but … a whole coda in which she kills herself because she’s off embroidery?

How many hobbies have I turned on? Has Gary thought I was going to kill myself each time?

Weekly Paint Progress: 7/8

This week the morning went from this:

… to this:

The noon went from this:

… to this:

The evening went from this:

… to this:

This is the scut work. No fun.

Ding!

My mom had this sundial, and as she did not grow old along with me, nor did either of her husbands, it is mine now.

See the shadow-caster, the triangular pointy thing … I looked it up, it’s called a “pointer” … see where it hits the 12:00 hour (represented by a 0 not an XII, don’t know how Mom let that slide)?

See how the edge of the pointer is not straight, instead there’s a curvy indentation just at toe height?

Picture stubbing your big toe on that indentation. Ow, right? Now, replay that scene, but slide the toes over a toe or so until what gets “stubbed” is the the toe groin right between your ring toe and your pinkie toe. Not just stubbed, stubbed and sliced so that there is blood (along with the dirt and a light coat of spray paint from an earlier project).

Spunky Labia International Toe Porn Superstar hurts a lot, but she knows she didn’t break anything but her pride, and she has more than enough pride to survive this.

Scratch!

How new is my car? When I get in I still smell “that” smell. It has been on the road less than t5 times. 

Last weekend it let me know that one tire was two psi less that the other tires, and that I could continue driving, but if you care to know, here is a graphic of your car and HOW MUCH AIR IS IN EACH TIRE and see, one of them has 37 psi not 39. I haven’t put air in a tire since 1985, so that was a fun hour-long project. Air costs money now, did you know that? I let a lot of air out of the tire before I realized that.

That was last week. This week I scratched it. I don’t know how an empty plastic trash bin could scratch a metal car, but it did. 

I understand that step one of recovery is denial, and step one of car scratches is take it to the car wash and see if the automatic pummeling buffs it out, so I’m doing that tomorrow.

 

Fantastical Facebook Posts

Two Facebook friends re-post images from some place named Amazing Nature. 
I posit the site should be named Amazing Photoshop. 

Am I right?

Glad We Have the Pet Model of Roomba

Evidently I only clean on national holidays.

This is Gary’s hair loss since Memorial Day:

The bin was completely jammed full.
I have no idea why I didn’t get the “Please remove and clean Roomba’s brushes” message. Perhaps it sensed that my Pet paid for the Roomba.

More Local Bear News

Someday I will tire of hearing of bears roaming my area, but today is not that day.

Two bits of bear news.

1. Last Tuesday’s bear evidently did indeed swim as the crows flies, crossed the river, and opted for a trash bin dinner 20 miles away instead of our healthy vegetarian offering.
   
   
2. The Bear of the Summer 2020, Bruno the wandering bear, (DTF) has reached a sad, sad end. If only he had stayed in Missouri, we would have kept him safe. So sad. 

Review: The Petrified Forest

I have long wanted to watch The Petrified Forest, because it stars the elegant, languorous Leslie Howard, he of the high forehead, the foregone front-runner for Ashley Wilkes. 

Gary has been on a Humphrey Bogart kick lately too, so this was all up in our demographic. 

Sadly, I hated it. I might have enjoyed it more had I not been distracted by Baby Boy Bogart, in his first big role, who sounded as if he were in a high-school play.

And his arms. Why? 



Now that I look it up online I read that he was positioning his arms like someone who was accustomed to being in shackles. I’m sure that was a nicety all the convicts in the audience in 1936 appreciated.  

This moved so slowly that I longed for the action scenes - and you know I tend to fall asleep in action scenes. Typical action scene in the last half: Bogart points a gun at Howard. Howard talks about art for five minutes. Bogart does not shoot him. So disappointing.

Not as disappointing as (almost) guessing the ending to Les Diaboliques, but close.

Weekly Paint Progress: 7/1

This week the morning went from this:

… to this:

The noon went from this:

… to this:

The evening went from this:

… to this:

I am hating all three equally.