Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Wildlife Takeover

I was out in the back yard and noticed our chimney siding no longer lines up at the top. Click the photo below to see how the edging is canted out, and also note that on the left side the nails are almost entirely out: you can see them silhouetted against the sky.

Not unrelated: there has been a party going on overhead. The sounds are skittering, thumping, sliding. No cheeping. Noises are at dawn and dusk. 

Of course, the obvious culprit is raccoons, but certainly I'd hear them vocalizing. They chitter. Chimney swifts make noise, I suppose. Squirrels never shut up. You know what doesn't make noise? Bats. 

Bats would be so cool. Because the repair person would just pull off the siding, shoo away the bats, we'd rehome them into a bat house, happy bats, happy husband. 

That's Best Case, of course Worst Case is pest control racoonicide and fines levied and crying raccoon babies. We find out this week. 

Draft 2 Done

The requisite "shitty first draft" is now an equally shitty second draft! But it's better, because it's twenty percent shorter, so, less shit. Even still, the resolution is somehow more bloated, and needs to be rearranged.

I discovered other issues, and now there are two additional drafts on the list. I suppose it's like cleaning: it has to get dirtier before it gets better. 

The writing style is very pedestrian. Doesn't sparkle at all. That's slated for draft twenty.

I suspect that like Jerry, I might die before this is finished.

Weekly Paint Progress: 4/28

This week there is a new dog.

I had to take him into Photoshop and tweak him.

Here is step one:

Errands

When I was partly laid off, I remember my "free" days were utterly consumed by running errands. It was infuriating to think I had 40% more free time, and I just frittered it buying stamps and going to the hardware store.

I have not run an errand in over two years. It was vital before. I had to go to the post office if I wanted to mail a box; I had to go to the DMV to renew my plates. 

Who knew? Who knew there were all these other options? Put the box on the bathroom scale and buy the postage from usps.gov. Renew my license plates online. The only errand I find that I have to do in person is to get things notarized.

And has eschewing errands made my life move faster or slower? Less busy work, so that's good, but less time spent being busy, and that's bad.

Mr. Science

I had the best of all possible junior high school science teachers. He was literally Mr. Science. From his obituary six years ago:

From 1970 - 1985 he was the Astronomer/Lecturer at the McDonnell Planetarium, and from 1970 - 1980 was known as Mr. Science, acting as the host of the Science Show and appearing several times on the children's show, Corky the Clown, teaching young kids about science. Les was also member of the St. Louis County Auxiliary Police from 1959-1969 and was a Science teacher at the Ferguson-Florissant School District for 40 years.

I thought of him when I had the cardiac stress test (the one that proved my heart is "excellent"). My baseline blood pressure was 104 over 58. I remembered when Mr. Science taught a lesson on blood pressure, he double-checked to confirm that my lab partner was correct to have read my BP as 90 over 60. 

You'd think I would have gone into a science field, given that I had the best science teacher available, but no. I don't even think I could make a battery out of test tubes and copper wire if called on to do so. Seems a waste of an excellent teacher. 

Rolling Stone Covers

We keep magazines in the bathroom: there's a chrome bucket that holds old issues of the AARP magazine and Rolling Stone. A few years ago I noticed that Gary kept putting one issue of Rolling Stone back in the bucket so you couldn't see the cover. I'd see the back cover instead of these pretty faces:

Turns out Gary found it too difficult to do any seated bathroom business with the girls staring at him.

I have been having the same problem this month.

I have taken a different approach to the problem.

Today I Learned: Gary Edition, #2

I need to make a new category up top there, one for the times Gary explains something to me that I do not already know.

We had one recently about the Great Schism, and just a few days ago he taught me a little biology. 

I was under the impression that cats have sex pretty much any time they are in heat, any month of the year. (I am telling myself that both cats have to be in heat and it is consensual. Do not disabuse me.) I also believed that cat heat happens on a monthly basis, like ovulation.

But NO! Gary found it hilarious that I would think that about cats, and reminded me about the raccoons that spend every spring  having noisy sex in our yard.

"Yeah, but cats aren't like that." I said. Because cats are civilized. And domesticated.  And there are photos of them in hats.

But according to this article, most cats are born in the spring. Like raccoons.

And unlike dogs, who do it whenever. 

First Hallmark Movie

I know lots of people enjoy Hallmark movies. They're like McDonald's, always reliable, comforting. I've never seen one, even though the TiVo seems to think I would really enjoy them. I just shudder and press delete.

Gary roped me into watching one because it was in a subset of Hallmark movies based on the Aurora Teagarden mystery stories that he enjoys.

I was struck by how damn pretty it was. Every scene is set in a gazebo or an autumn forest and somehow only the tops of the trees are red and gold and then the color ombrés down to spring green. Even the parking lot scene included only new freshly-waxed cars.

The people are of course pretty, though Gary complained they aren't as diverse as they are in the books. I would say the main character is pretty, but I was distracted by her messy/perfect braid. See? It's clearly a fake braid woven into her real hair.

And the very first scene is set with a camera trick of her braiding "her" hair.  With that distraction I could not suspend my disbelief for more than half an hour and I stopped watching.

Still, I watched part of a Hallmark movie, so that's a new thing I did this week.

Co-worker Owns Me

I was in a meeting when someone mentioned that April showers bring May flowers, and of course I responded with,"Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote!"

And then I stopped, because that's all I know of Canterbury Tales, just the "April showers" part written in Middle English. 

A co-worker answered, "The droghte of March hath perced to the roote" and then proceeded to rattle of the rest of the entire canto without stopping for breath.

I laughed so hard I wheezed. I have never been so delightfully one-upped. 

I mean I assume he was quoting the rest of it, he could be saying some Swedish Chef gibberish and passing it off as Middle English. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 4/21

This week the dog went from this:

... to this.

Dog is done! Here's where it started.

Religion, Again

Elvis's gospel catalog popped up on Alexa the other day. It's hard to resolve the two personas of Elvis: gospel-singing Elvis and drug-addled Elvis. I've decided he was all-in on the gospel and only half-hearted about the drugs.  

I was only half-listening, and a song came up on the rotation with the words "and the flurry of God's trumpets," and suddenly every word of "The King is Coming" came back to me from my five years of Southern Baptism. 

I know that during that five year period the radio played "Annie's Song" by John Denver twenty times a day, and I probably heard "The King is Coming" three times in that same five years. It's remarkable to me that I remember one song in detail and the other I falter after "You fill up my senses like a light in a forest?" (And now that I check, it's "a night in a forest.")

I decided to research if music, memory, and religion all take up space in the hippocampus, and that led me to a study that reads "The findings of this study indicate that certain religious factors may influence longitudinal change in hippocampal volume during late life." Religion shrinks your brain, essentially.

But I say, correlation or cause? Also, did the subjects find religion late in life because of their atrophy, or can my early religion come back and bite me in my eighty-year-old ass?

Scary thoughts, and this study suggests the resulting cortisol stress is going to shrink my brain too. 

The Gary Diet

Encouraged by the short-lived success of the Gulag Diet and the Six-Bite Diet, Gary has invented another diet: the Caesar Diet.

Every few days he makes a gallon of Caesar salad and gnaws on that when he feels hungry. Hungry at breakfast? Eat some salad. Hungry at midnight? Eat some salad. 

"Healthy salad!" Gary says. Depending on how you define "salad," it may be a salad, but it is in no way healthy. Well, perhaps that's too harsh. There is no broken glass in the salad.

It is comprised of 20% Marie's blue cheese chunky salad dressing, 10% feta, 5% parmesan, 30% bell pepper, 30% shredded artichoke, 5% chicken breast, and 0% lettuce. (He always adds in half a bag of crunchy croutons on the side in case you are worried he doesn't get enough fiber.)

He came back from the doctor, pleased that he had lost 34 pounds Knowing Gary's ambiguous numbering system I double-checked. He lost 24 pounds. Still, that's pretty good. 

He also dropped his Dr. Pepper consumption in half. And of course, that's the key.

Pension

It was last June when Gary began the process to get his pension. He hasn't worked there for decades, so it wasn't a turnkey operation, plus the company was sold to another major aeronautical company late in his tenure. So he somehow had two pensions, and that complicated things. Plus, he wants it dispensed as a lump sum to so we can roll it over and briefly avoid taxes.

Top that off with his laissez-faire attitude about money, even more laissez than mine, and that explains why the kitchen table has been covered with pension forms for nine months. 

Thankfully, through there were many letters from the company insisting they need to speak with him urgently, and zero phone calls from Gary asking anyone for help, that chore is done and the table is almost clear. He refuses to put away the magnifying glass and the last communication. Because he thinks he's done something wrong and they could take it back.

So, nine months. Factor that into your retirement plans.

UPDATED; Easter

For the first time since I have known him, Gary has not purchased an excessive number of Easter Bunnies. He almost got there last year when he bought two bunnies for one person.

This year ZERO bunnies. End of an era. But the day is not over.

========

UPDATE; He didn't make it through the day. Only bought three, though.

UPDATED: Neurologist visit

So excited to have seen the neurologist Thursday, because I heard Evusheld and Plaxovid are finally available to the general immunocompromised public, and I knew one of them could act as an effective vaccine, and if so I would like some, please.

I have already forgotten which one is pre-infection and which is post-infection, but it doesn't matter: I can't take it because it causes heart problems. You say, "But what if your heart test Monday is fine?" Won't matter then either, because my high cholesterol disqualifies me. "But what if the statins lower your cholesterol?" Well, maybe, I guess, but opera season will be over by then. And really, I'm around other people more vulnerable than I am, when it comes right down to it, so I have to stay vigilant anyway.

So nothing like a vaccine for me. My white blood cells are high, but the infection-fighting part of the equation is still low.

But, I was relieved to find that the potential cardiac problem will not disqualify me from taking the Mayzent pills, because any potential cardiac problem would have got me early on. 

The final bit of news was very germane: the best diet for MS has proven to be the Mediterranean diet, which I switched to two weeks ago when my left chest began to hurt. Supposedly the key factor is the olive oil. The last person I heard sing the praises of olive oil is dead now, of course. 

Also, last time I saw the doctor none of his other MS patients had died, this time seven have died, all but one unvaccinated. (And the one had other health issues.).

That's the update, folks, stuck inside for the summer: second verse, same as the first.

==========

UPDATE: I had a stress test and my heart looks "excellent," so that's part of the battle won. Now just a good cholesterol test and I can get what passes for a vaccine. 

Bill of Rites

It's  Good Friday, and I am thinking about religion. I'm a hybrid of baby Catholic, teenage Southern Baptist, and adult Agnostic. Here are the three of seven sacraments I have participated in.

Baptism

I was baptized Catholic, grandfather was a convert, there was no debate. They sprinkled me and evidently that got me into heaven. 

In my teens I thought I could use my free will to change religions, so when I became a Southern Baptist they felt the Catholic rite was bogus and instead I needed a full immersion. I argued, given that I had already gone though the rite of walking up to the altar in front of strangers as the Baptists do, and I felt that was enough public attention. No, they said, I had to be put in a robe and immersed in front of strangers and then raised up soaking wet with my robe plastered to my bosom. Baptist Church Wet Robe Contest. 

I think I held out a few months. Eventually it was just too unpleasant watching  my parents' amusement as church elders come to my house, and so I caved. 

Marriage

My Catholic baptism gave me a wink and nod back into the Catholic Church when I married a Catholic. It interested me that the sacrament of marriage doesn't transfer between churches. In fact, if I'd been married at the City Hall and then tried to marry Gary they would have taken points off for sex without their blessing, but they would have let me. However, if I'd first married someone else in the Baptist church I'd have to get that annulled. So what if I'd been immersed, then later wanted to be sprinkled? They wouldn't expect me to be annul my baptism, right? Does that happen? 

Anointing of the Sick

Surprise sacrament! I didn't even know this was a thing until I got MS. However, you too can line up in the church basement and be anointed with holy healing oil. It didn't hurt, and unlike marriage, if I'd had hands laid on me in another church it doesn't need to be un-done. 

Now, of course, I have run out of rites and run out of interest in religion. No doubt I'll pick it up again in my dotage. I could switch to Eastern Orthodox or Mormon and see which credits transfer and which don't.

Weekly Paint Progress: 4/14

This week the dog went from this:

... to this.

I think it's time to compare values with the original. And I overdid the upper lip. But some parts are better. One more pass, I think. 

Oscar Meyer Yum Choir

So I didn't notice it at the time, but last year the Oscar Meyer company evidently began an ad campaign in which a choir sings the word "yum" repetitively. 

It was only this year that the grey-uniformed singers began to look sinister.

Look at these guys. Do they look a little Russian to you?

Vladimir Putin looks at the new uniform on the left and says, "Yes, he does look like a Yum Choir member, very good."

Billions

Billions writers, enough with the pop-culture references.

This is me watching Billions.

(Pauses TV.)

"Alexa. Who is Greg Stilson?"

"Here's something I found on the web. According to fightbookmma.com, from 2002-2007 Flanery played the troubled politician, Greg Stilson, opposite Anthony Michael Hall in the USA network's The Dead Zone."

(One minute later.)

"Alexa. Who is Rielle?"

Alexa doesn't know, but Google says she's Rielle Hunter of the John Edwards political scandal.

I am happy to say I caught the Pete Weber reference.

But that's only because I grew up in Florissant and I had a friend who dated  Petey Weber.

If not for Shannon, I would have had to ask Alexa.

Calcium, Vitamin D, Which Came First?

Well, blood numbers came back for my physical, and they are wonky. The Dread Wonky Numbers.

Really, only two are wonky: the calcium and the vitamin D. Or the vitamin D and the calcium, which may seem like the same thing, but it is not.

The vitamin D levels may have increased for no reason, and that may have increased the calcium as well because they are related, and the calcium is what regulates your heart, so that all fits. Vitamin D --> Calcium --> heart. Easy fix. Take less vitamin D.

Or, the calcium levels may have increased for no reason CANCER, and the calcium is what regulates your heart, and the calcium may have increased the vitamin D as well because they are related, so that all fits. Calcium --> heart and Vitamin D. Hard fix. Deal with the cancer. A less likely sequence, but then factor in that my white blood cells have shot up to the middle of normal range. Or, maybe the boosters have boosted everything but my lymphocytes, which are still pitiful.

I was half asleep when I did the Google search that brought me to these conclusions. It is entirely possible that those two overages are so minimal that it could be my change in diet. I truly don't know. I was just pleased that I found the calcium / heart connection, and that all the numbers contributed to a solution, instead of a mystery.

So it's a chicken / egg / cardiac conundrum. I'll know later this month, though.

Carded

In searching for the Genesis of Spunky, I encountered an old post on how it felt to be carded at 44. (I was not gracious.)

It stood out because I was just carded a few days ago. I was carded the only way I could be carded during Covid. I ordered sherry (for cooking) through the grocery application, and the shopper is required to scan the buyer's ID for liquor purchases. (You all may know that. I didn't. )

Carded a few months shy of 60. Could be a record.

Spunky Mourns Her Fallen Star

There was a time, sixteen years ago, when Spunky Labia, International Toe Porn Superstar, came into this world when I looked at my Google searches and discovered a fair number of men from foreign countries got here searching for "toe porn". 

I visited my Google searches recently and was curious to see what my lowest search term is. The search that is least popular, even below "snaggly whiplash" (brother of Snidely Whiplash?) and "toilet brush scat," is "toe porn." It has 0 clicks and only 1 time it was even viewed on a page with other Google results. 

I feel I need to comfort Spunky by doing a retrospective of her youth. Too many Spunky references to list them all, but here is the Nascent Spunky.

The first reference

She is yet unnamed

She poses

Still amazed by the toe porn searches

Yet another Google search gives her a name

 

 

Rewriting the Novel: Hitch

I thought this pre-resolution chapter was all set for a second draft, but upon review it was off the rails. Zero tension. Zero conflict. No one grows. You just wait.What I have to do is made my heroine's dark night of the soul even darker. I hate that part. 

So, I hacked it. Well, I kept half, so it got a hemicorporectomy. But, that meant I have to pull about 3,000 words out of the ether again. I'm doing it, but it now the chapter has an alternating structure: it starts with draft two quality, then there's some draft one, draft two, draft one, and so on, and good LORD my first drafts are awful.  

And since it's half miserable and half acceptable all I want to do is improve the acceptable stuff, given the choice. Polishing the turds: more fun than producing the turds. And the turds are the darkest turds. (I have not used that word ever before in this blog, so I am making up for lost time.) 

I'm making myself come up with one sentence a day. On with it, then. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 4/7

This week the dog went from this:

... to this.

Liking it less. I need to paint less of what I see.

Apartment Therapy

Now that the renters are buying Mom's house, I won't need to do any renovations there. Regardless, I continue to be transfixed by the before and after section of Apartment Therapy, specifically the kitchen renovations. I know I'll never use the tips and tricks in my own home, because I will be one of those ladies who die at 90 and strangers will gush over my perfectly maintained late 1980's ranch home. 

The big tip that I see on 59% of the kitchen makeovers is painting the cabinets: one color for the upper cabinets and another for the lower.

I Googled to see how long that nonsense would hold up without dings and scratches. All I found was one designer gushing there were no nicks in his kitchen after ... two years. I am not impressed.    

Woodwork? Paint it. Brick fireplace? Paint it. Bathroom tile? Paint it. Ugh.

I'm going to keep following Apartment Therapy for the next twenty years until I read an article that begins "Joe and Jenny were thrilled with their late 20th century ranch house, except for their painted kitchen cabinets. With just some turpentine and elbow grease they were able to strip the cabinets down to the original Honey oak."

Bogey March

Since watching Bridge Over the River Kwai I have had nothing in my ears but the music to Colonel Bogey March, and of course my brain is searching to remember the words. I almost got there on my own  -- I switched Goebbels and Goering, I think. 

So I looked up the exact words to "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball" in Wikipedia, and found not just the words but the delightful photo commentary to the right.

Cooking Hack

Mom taught me to peel potatoes and carrots and turnips when I was very young. She was 13 when she lost the full use of her arms, so no peeling for her. She taught me how. 

Before last weekend, this is how I would peel a vegetable:

Pick up the carrot with chubby end in left hand, hold chest high, frantically run the peeler away from sternum, raining peels into sink. Same thing with potatoes, without a preferred end. Turnips were harder, because they are round, but still peel while suspended below ones breast bone.

Something came over me last weekend. Fatigue? Possibly. I decided to change it up.

I put the cutting board across the sink. I positioned the carrot on the board with the bulky end away from me. With my left hand I pinned down the end and with my right I dragged the peeler toward me. I rotated the carrot as I went.

That went so well I did the same with the potato: I propped it up on a cut end and pivoted it like a top, peeling down to the cutting board.  I did much the same with the turnip, but I peeled from bottom to top, like I was giving it a little turnip shave.

Way, way easier. Also cleaner: there were no carrot shavings behind the blender this time. I wonder if other people peel mid-air like mom taught me. I can't have been the only one.

Basket

I used my Intro to Baskets kit and I did indeed make a wee Navel-Orange sized basket.


Lots of flaws, but it IS a basket. It was pretty soothing, as one would expect from the stereotypical mental hospital hobby.

Blaze

A few nights ago I heard odd whooshing and banging sounds outside the front window. I thought it was my neighbor to the East, slamming car doors and trunks. Then I heard a bang loud enough to make me scream and jump.

I peeked out the window and things were calm to the north. I looked out every window in the house, and the only odd thing wasn't a noise, it was a color.  The pear tree -- which had just bloomed all white that same day -- was now lit up like Christmas. Well, if the Christmas colors were orange, yellow and red. 

Some of you now know what was going on. I've never been in this situation, so I was unaware.

I had looked through every window, so all I could do was look out the front door and ... 

1. wonder what was going on to make all that noise on the other side of the street.
2. walk off the porch to see the massive truck entirely on fire in the neighbor's driveway.
3. yelp "Jesus!" and run back inside.

I got Gary so we could both be horrified by the flames leaping as high as the peak of the garage. The truck was firing out missiles, too. Gary immediately decided the man had been hoarding cans of gas in his truck bed and they were exploding.

Another neighbor came out to tell she'd called 911 and they knew already ... and on cue we heard the sirens. We hid inside and watched the disaster through the blinds. 

The next day there was no evidence but a truck that was half shiny cab and half gutted grey truck corpse. 

Heart Update

Well, the heart doctor appointment had three results:

1. He scheduled an echocardiogram and a stress test for two weeks away, which suggests to me I don't urgently need an echocardiogram and a stress test.
2. He isn't too terribly concerned about the EKG, which surprises me, because I was under the impression that is why I was there.
3. He is terribly concerned about my cholesterol and impressed on me my need for cholesterol-lowering statins. He was appalled, appalled I tell you, by my LDL numbers. Normal is 100, my LDL is 181. Evidently, 190 is when things get very, very bad.

I filled the statin prescription. I will alert the GP and the neurologist, both conveniently scheduled in the next few weeks.

What I anticipate hearing from the GP is that the MS drugs skew the liver numbers, and bad liver numbers might mask any liver damage from side effects of statins.  

What I anticipate hearing from the neurologist is that statins are good for MS. Every quarter when I fill out my MS questionnaire they quiz me about statins. People on statins have less brain loss in MS; they don't know why. They've even started a Phase 3 clinical trial about it.

Right now I'm leaning pro-statin, obviously, but I need more info.