Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Package Warning

Last week when I bought the zip-on fitted sheet (which is a bit deep for my mattress but delightful to zip off)  somehow I entered my address one digit off. Jumped through a few hoops, got the sheets.

Then I discovered on the USPS web site that I'd made the same mistake for a surprise sweatshirt I bought Gary, and the next morning Gary got this text message:

"That's odd," I thought, "Why are they sending the message to Gary?" we clicked that link and stopped at the spot where they said the package was three dollars extra, and that's when I pumped the brakes. 

I sent an email to USPS asking if my suspicious were valid and if there was another way I could pay, and almost immediately they called back and said, "That's a con." 

But it was so convincing! I would show you the professional page where that link goes, but I can't, all I get today is this:

Here's the odd thing: I really did have a package with the wrong address, one digit off. The postal customer service man explained my regular postman would have delivered it, but I had a temp today. In fact he was so helpful I began to think he might be a con artist himself, wriggling in to my good graces.

No con thoguh, just a coincidence, not surprising given how many packages Gary and I have been ordering.

Yet Another Mystery Solved

Last month I lost the debit card for my health savings account.

I imagine a lot of people did. This month the cashier at the drive through said, "I'm putting your card in this little white envelope and stapling it to the bag so you won't lose it."

Yes? You mean the bag that has so much other detritus stapled to it that I open the bag from the bottom to extract the meds before I throw the mess into the trash without touching it? 

So, lesson learned. If you lost a card, that's where it was, in the little white envelope stapled to the receipt and the warnings and documentation. 

Socialization Update

It has been about a week since I made my concerted effort to connect more with humans while isolated.

Text Conversations
It is remarkable how my phone has been battering me with text dings and buzzes. It seems the handyman texts, then the realtor, the property management company, the neighbor, my brother, and then the strangest one was my childhood friend texting "Where did you live in Florissant?" literally fifteen minutes after I closed on the sale of that same house. I texted with Friends 2-4 for the first time in a few months, so that was nice.

In non-text news, I chatted with the lawnmowing service from a distance. 

Communal Sports Events

The Blues hockey team were progressing in the playoffs, and while the city wasn't as demented as they were when the Blues won the Stanley Cup, it was headed that way until they lost. The Cardinals baseball team have been reunited with Albert Pujols, and winning in such blowouts that the spirit of Whitey Herzog was resurrected and they let Yadi the catcher and Pujols both pitch for a while. I wonder if they'll resurrect Pujol's restaraunt in Westport. (Because with a name like Pujols ...)

Steven Page Patreon

I have watched two Q&As and been awed by how confidently people ask questions. Withoutnthat I woukdn't have known he was opening for The Who five nights in Canada.  I mean, The Who. I've even heard of them.

Masterclass 

You might think watching a Masterclass doesn't count as a communal experience, but I got to hear David Sedaris talk about the Tiffany essay in Calypso that impressed me so much. Evidently there are two camps: the people who comdemn him for his treatment of Tiffany, and people with Tiffanies of their own. 

... It was also nice to hear he has trouble with endings too.

Test

I have been trying to model responsible health behaviors for Gary, and to that end (ahem), I am testing for colon cancer. 

This time: no prep, no sedative: I am using the Poop it -> Mail it -> Test it Cologuard test. 

I expected these supplies: a microscope slide, a wooden collection stick, and a durable envelope. That's what I was expecting.

What I got was a pressure cooker.

Evidently they expect that one makes a deposit directly into the pressure cooker. There is a maximum size but not a minimum size, so that's going to be difficult to judge. There's some other stuff to do, some alchemy with chemicals,  and then it all goes back in the box and is sent off to the lab. 

Sadly, it turns out Gary can't do it at all, because he had a pre-cancerous polyp before, but I can. I can't do it yet, because Memorial Day might slow the shipment, but once that's over then the scat is in the mail.  

Will it be preferable to a colonoscopy? Has to be, right? Turns out Gary finds all this manipulation so distasteful that it's mentally prepared him for his colonoscopy in 2023, so I've done my job. 

Closing Day

Well, today is the day we close on the sale of the house I grew up in. It feels awful to sell a house that's been in my family for almost fifty years. awful, even though it's the best possible conclusion: selling to the renters who have taken very good care of it for ten years. Plus I'm selling in a good market, and when you add ten years of rent on top of what we're getting with an as-is sale, I think even my Dad would approve of my financial decisions. 

It's totally possible they turn it around in to their own rental property and then will sell it for double in a year, and that's fine. I know they've painted every possible surface and might not even wait till closing to change the flooring. If things fall through, as they do at closings, then free flooring for me, I guess. 

But I doubt that will happen. It will be anticlimactic, and hopefully the market will still be down so the money can be converted to off-price stock, and my late Dad will be even more pleased. Funny, this is the first time since he died in '88 that I have imagined my Dad judging me from the beyond. It's probably the biggest investment I've made, and it stemmed from when he assumed a skimpy $27,000 loan in the '70s.

I wonder why I'm so concerned about my imaginary dead dad being pleased. Why am I not just pleased with myself like a normal person? I suppose it's because I feel guilty trading my history for cash. But cash isn't cash, it's security. It'll keep us in our homes when we're old, I hope.

Plus, it's not like I'm auctioning away a family farm that's been our family's homestead for generations.  

So I shouldn't feel guilty, right? But I still do. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 5/26

Attempt 2 on the Blue Heeler went from this:

... to this:

Treeple

My brother lives in Albuquerque, town of his birth, where the air is too dry to cause any asthma flare-ups, and where he can say "I ate at that diner!" for every diner in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. 

He knows many meth addicts, because yes, they do have a lot of meth there in New Mexico, and he's always giving me little peeks into the world of addiction. Most recently, he told me about "Treeple."

Per Dave, and that link to Urban Dictionary, Treeple are the shadowy people who live in the trees and follow paranoid meth addicts.

It's odd to think that a drug causes reliable, specific hallucinations. I know I've read that people who take ketamine share a hallucination in which they see tiles and then fall down a hole and meet God. Like, "Have some K, say hi to God for me."

I have questions. If you take Ketamine and Meth at the same time, which hallucination do you have? Or do you have both? Do the tree people follow you down the hole where you all have lunch with God, until they start whispering to God and He turns on you? Does the ketamine trigger the hippocampus, hence religion, hence God, and if so where is the part of the brain in charge of tiles? And where is the paranoid lobe, or the tree neurons?

All of this sounds a little like the urban legends about people on LSD trying to fly. I don't know how much to believe. Let me know if you've seen God or Treeple, or if you have a friend who has.

In Which We Were Fired

I was fired once, actually fired. I don't mean semi-fired, like when I disappeared from the schedule at the IHOP, or when my teaching contract was not renewed after I refused to change a kid's failing grade. I mean actually actively fired, pack up, turn in your badge. 

I was a cashier at the university cafeteria, and I was called into the office by my boss, Mr. W____, who asked me to explain how my deposit was 400 dollars short. I couldn't explain. I counted out 800 dollars, wrote 800 dollars on the envelope, slid it into the safe through the slot. And now he was saying there were only 400 dollars in the envelope? 

How could that be? A mystery. 

My boss did not find it mysterious. He fired me, and there were tears, tears all the way home, tears on the phone to my then-boyfriend Gary, who said, sympathetically, "You are clearly upset! So I won't see you tonight. I'll talk to you tomorrow." 

A week later I was in my former workplace, eating lunch, and a fellow cashier told me that since I was last there another person had been called into Mr. W____'s office, again with a short deposit envelope, only this time Mr. W____'s boss noticed a pattern. After Mr. W____ refused to take a lie detector test, he himself was fired. 

Cocaine? Gambling? We wondered, but that would stay a mystery.  I had already nabbed a better job in the library days after I was canned, so I was actually better off. (In addition, Gary learned that when your girlfriend has been fired that is not a reason to break your date.)

I never had trouble getting a job after that, though I never tried for another job where I handled money. I never tried to clear my name, because I felt anyone who knew the situation knew the resolution. The nice thing is, nothing that awful has happened since. 

What Worked Before

This phase of the pandemic has been particularly hard for me. First time around, we were all in it together, and we banded together to keep ourselves entertained with online concerts and creativity and the entire globe was going through the same nonsense.

Now the entire globe seems to be going on vacation, while three percent of us are at home with chemo or autoimmune diseases and no community bonding. (And, a special thought for people who have to be immunocompromised because of cancer chemotherapy, fighting for their lives in multiple fronts. Awful.)

Anyway, I thought I should look back at what got me through 2020 and try to find something similar today, something that would give me community and entertainment. I'm searching for good things from the Covid Times that are still around in the Post-After Times, (which may turn into the Before Times Redux if the Northeast keeps getting worse). 

Steven Page is still doing his Saturday from home concerts, but they are sadly on the one day I am stretching my family bubble. Only, now I can watch the replays because I joined his Patreon. And the Patreon gets me access to all the concerts I had to miss, and also QA and sessions where I can lurk and watch my cruise / Facebook / concert friends talk to each other.

So that's one thing. If I'm trying to resurrect more Pandemic coping strategies from before, what else can I do other than baking sourdough?

Busch for Senate

Well, this is remarkable. A member of the Busch family (of Anheuser-Busch) seems to be entering public politics, as opposed to the politics practiced by the other influential St. Louis beer barons in her family. 

And she isn't even a Borderline Busch, she's Gussie Busch's daughter by Gertrude the Blond. Her name is Trudy Busch Valentine and she's running for senate as a Democrat.

I want you to know I am allllll in for this, Saint Louis. I want to see this show. It's going to be fantastic or a disaster, because that's how they roll. 

UPDATED; Syntax Word Problem

I have a question. Gary was expressing something about the doctor's waiting room.

He said that when he's been there, "Everyones not masked."

So if he goes in to the waiting room and he is the tenth person there, how many people (other  than Gary) are wearing a mask?

Update =========

I interpreted his statement to mean there were 0 people masked. I said I only remembered one non-masked person, he said, YES EVERYBODY WAS NOT MASKED. When I pointed out the ambiguity, he said WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO ARGUE WITH ME. One hour later he claimed he said "Not everyone was masked," and did not appreciate it when i pointed to the documentation I'd made pre-post. 

Class of '22

Raccoon babies have arrived two days earlier than last year.

 

Weekly Paint REGRESSION: 5/15

Regress this time, becuase this week the Blue Heeler went from this:

... to this.

I am starting again. I'll set the poor attempt aside, and try again to make a smaller, more thinly glazed dog, like the first one, as they need to be a pair. Trying again so they seem to be painted by the same person.

Trash Mystery

About thirty-seven years ago I mentioned to Gary that putting the trash at the curb is the man's job.  He disagreed.

I thought he might embrace the trash after retirement, but that was ... what? Almost a decade ago? 

After patiently waiting a decade, I find that last month Gary became TrashMan. He routinely goes through he house emptying the trash. He also puts the trash at the curb once a week, which is problematic because he puts Monday morning's trash out at 2 pm on Saturday. (Except for last week when he put it out at 9am Saturday.)

Of course, I can't complain to him for the way he does the thing I've wanted him to do for years.  I can complain to you. I'm just waiting for the neighbors to complain, but if they don't complain about the squirrels that bury peanuts in their yards and chew on their truck wiring potentially causing a fire, then they won't complain the trash is out two days early.

Decision Idiocy

Gary and I have been squabbling like mad. Some decisions need to be made in the house, and his decision-making process is this:

Stage 1: Ellen, what do you think of X? (I fall into the trap.)

Stage 2: No, Ellen, you are wrong and stupid, and here is why.

Stage 3: Repeat Stage 2 until all possibilities are exhausted.

Stage 4: Buy the thing / Do the thing based on some whim he has because it doesn't matter, every option is crap.

How do I break this cycle? I wonder if he's expecting me to come up with a pro to counter every con. Like a little Pollyanna punching bag. Nope. Not doing that. 

I suppose I have the option to not fall into the trap. "I don't know Gary, what do you think of X?" He would hate that. No decision would be made, ever. 

I am sure he hates my decision-making process, which is to make the decision without involving him at all. I do know when I ask his opinion, he is great at giving me a list of all the cons, and how it would be best if we do nothing. It's his anxiety. I should be more sympathetic. 

I can't say it's dysfunctional, because it functions, decisions are made, but I have this fantasy that there is a world in which couples make decisions rationally. They write a list of pros and cons and don't turn a debate into an argument. 

I suppose I could try being Pollyanna Punching Bag now that I think of it. It would be awful but I might wear him down. Eventually he would be magnanimous and permit me to do whatever I want. Would it be worth it, though? The emotional toll? 

Another Sad Thing in a Sad Week

This isn't too terribly sad, it's just annoying.

I was rubbing the backs of my ears, trying to analyze why my mask felt so snug, and I realized I AM TOO FAT FOR MY MASK, damnittohell.

The water weight from the Mediterranean diet is puffing up my face and now my KN95 tugs on my ears. Annoying. 

Opera

I was complaining to Gary that recent Covid developments are going to make it so I can't go to the opera.

"At least not this year," I sighed. "Maybe ever."

"Don't be stupid," he said, sympathetically, "Just sit in a booth by yourself."

"A booth?"

"Yes. One of those booths they have. And don't share the booth, and double-mask, and you'll be fine. I mean not now, but maybe later."

I just stared at him, about to say, "A booth? Do you think the opera's like a diner --" when I realized he meant box, not booth, and that even more amusingly he thinks the Saint Louis Opera has opera boxes full of wealthy women in furs and eighteen-button gloves, and that I would just take an entire "booth" for myself.

 

A Brief Hitch

Well, my plan to get some protection against the virus hit a snag. The plan was:

Qualify for a protective dose of Evusheld. I still wouldn't be leaving the house, because of Gary and other vulnerable people, but at least if I caught the Covid on the wind it would be less dire. 

For that, I need my heart to be in good shape.

To that end, I need to get my cholesterol down.

Therefore, statins: hopefully ones that would not affect my liver enzymes too much.

So, this was discouraging.

Those bad liver enzyme numbers were curse-worthy when I saw them on the patient portal. Gary tried to cheer me up by reminding me that even if I didn't have a compromised immune system from the MS drugs, I'd still be compromised by my age, so why even try.

Still, doctors know better, and the doctor's keeping me on the statin for another six weeks to see if the numbers settle down. I guess it's possible that this was just a hiccup. One of those two numbers is always high from the Mayzent. 

I know people who are so young they take no pills. Can you imagine? Here I am taking pills so that I can be rewarded with more pills. 

Rewriting the Novel: The View In-process

Oil paintings look the best to me when I have things roughed in. The real danger zone comes between when the paint is roughed in, with all its potential, and the final finishing highlights are put in.

That's when things go south. And the only place it can go is south, because I haven't screwed it up yet. I think that's when people tell themselves they have no talent and give up, whereas I slog on, damnit, ignoring my lack of talent.  Paintings. Guitars. Books.  

The thing about paintings is you can see how they look immediately, and you can hear your guitar, but you can't tell how a book reads in the moment. So again, you have to let it rest to forget it a little. 

I really hate that part. But here we are, ignoring the book so I can see it with fresh eyes, after which I will be cursed to keep pounding on it. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 5/12

This week the Blue Heeler went from this:

... to this.  

Yeah, that's just weird. I think I reacted to the black and white with a touch too much color. And the legs are technically accurate but strange at the same time. That whole thing needs to be knocked back. I need to prop the last dog up on the table so I can make them look somewhat the same. Might be too late for that, though. 

Ruffles!

Well! This was a bit of good news. I opened up the Amazon toilet paper delivery and found a surprise. It's the wavy-edged toilet paper I was so enchanted by in 2021.

I just had to wait a year and it came to pass. I've used it every two hours and it still delights me.

In Which I Do Nothing

Someone I know subscribed to Masterclass, and given that I may not be leaving the house for the foreseeable future, I went ahead and paid out for my own subscription. It seems pretty expensive, especially if you feel knowledge is free. But, I got a license that lets Gary use it too. So he might become even more insufferable.

The first class I took was from David Sedaris, and what was the first thing he taught me?

"Leave the house."

Knew that.  I remember back when I would do things JUST to get a blog post. (See Segwaying through Forest Park.)

And now my social activities are dropping one at a time, and I can't really contribute to the ones that are still there. Because I am boring. I have nothing to share. It's odd that life-or-death Covid drama saps any drama from my life story, but there it is. Or isn't. 

But at least there's a path forward. My heart is fine, and if my cholesterol is fine I will plead for the Evusheld -- but even then I've got vulnerable people around, and I still need to watch out. And stay in. 

Someone needs to go take a Segway tour on my behalf. I need to sign up for some on-line live concerts to replace the ones that have moved on. Maybe I could take up those ultra-violent multi-player games and boast about how many teenage boys I made cry. Things need to start moving.

Personal Work Idiocy

I was put on a team at work, we were given new software, and tasked with making a little practice project. We put about four hours of work into it.

Toward the end, I was just playing with the software. I added our new project to my list of preferred projects in my new workspace, and then I changed my mind, and deleted it from the list. Let me be clear. I deleted it from the list.

It even said, "Are you sure you want to delete this? You will not see it again."

A more accurate warning would have been, "You will not see it again, you, nor any of your kin: it will be gone from not only this list of preferred projects but all the world and all its bytes will be scattered to the ether." 

Because it was not only gone from the list, it was 100% gone.

And because I am compelled to confess all my sins, I told everyone on my team immediately, then I told everyone on the larger team, then I publicly applauded myself for having only done it once in sixty years, then immediately remembered the time I deleted an entire project directory and then I had to tell everyone about that too. 

Why am aI compelled in this way? Good thing I've never done anything criminal. Or good thing I don't remember it if I did.

Seducible Moments

Someone at work introduced a new term, "seducible moment," the moment when you might gets users to commit to what you want. 

Everyone giggled, but by the end of the day even modest young ladies were using the term.

It enraged me.

What I want to do now is to use the term in our next big meeting, but slowly, in an impossibly dry, pointed  tone, with a raised eyebrow, the left one, because it goes higher, so people will know Grandma does not approve of this horseshit.

After years of suppressing my sexuality, prohibitions on my attire, finger shaking and eyebrow raising, now I have managers tossing out sexual terms. First we were told our projects weren't "sexy" enough, now our moments need to be "seducible." 

And this was a male manager introducing the term. Isn't he being suppressed? Isn't he being told never compliment a woman's blouse, never make a double-entendre? Have the tables not turned? No. No, of course not.

Alternatively, reckless cursing has been introduced by the female Big Boss. I wonder if any older men who work for her resent that they had to change their cursing behavior in front of the opposite sex for years and now the ladies are doing it.

I mean, really. (Clucks disapprovingly.)

Russian Progress

I am proud to say that if any Russians try to speak with me on the topics of: eating apples, drinking milk, and the locations of the subway, the square, and the horses, I will be able to keep up my side of the conversation. Well, as long as my side of the conversation is presented as words that can be dragged and dropped into the correct order.  

I am still in the first section, and on to genitives, which is a word form we don't even have in the US. 

I admire the pairing of the difficult genitive lesson with the easy animal vocabulary lesson. I am very, very dismayed the first two animals we learned were not moose and squirrel; I think that was a missed opportunity.

Fitted Sheet

There must be some reason this hasn't become the standard for fitted sheets everywhere. These are fitted sheets you put on your mattress, and then when you need to change them, you just zip off the top.

The video is vague, but I picture a fitted sheet installed upside down, so the elastic is visible, only instead of elastic, there's a zipper and a sheet that zips on.  Otherwise, you'd just have a fitted sheet again that would eventually ride up the mattress like underwear, but the sheet eventually snaps up to the top. 

I was all excited by this prospect, only to read the flaw is that the sheets sometimes tear. I assume they tear at the zipper and that there is a weight limit, or perhaps I don't know, an activity / enthusiasm limit. 

I went as far as measuring my mattress. Sadly, my mattress is two inches smaller all around than the twin size sheets sold by the first company I found. I'd already found a twin bolster that was two inches too large for my mattress. A Great Mattress Upsize must have happened in the last thirty years. (Yes, my mattress is thirty years old, but it's been an unused guest bed for twenty.)

So, this may turn into a cascade of ill-advised purchases: new mattress before any zippered fitted sheet, unless the new freakishly flat box-spring substitute doesn't fit the cherry sleigh bed the entire room is built around, and then I don't even want to think about where that goes. Raze the house, I guess. 

Of course, if I made my own I could tailor them to fit my bed, but for that I'd have to get my sewing machine fixed. That might be a better solution.

Weekly Paint Progress: 5/5

This week the Blue Heeler went from this:

... to this.

On further analysis I see I have misinterpreted the dog's two paws. Easy fix.

Wildlife Takeover Update

Well, I need to decide between the two men who came out to deal with with our concerns. My concern is the animal skittering at dusk and dawn, Gary's concerns are the intermittent rain in the bathroom and the attic access.

Both men agreed that:

• There are no animals crawling between the fireplace and the siding, those nails have just popped out because that's what nails do.
• Putting up a screen to keep animals out of the attic would be smart.
• My vents are shameful. Rusty, nasty, evident holes, mold and decay.
• They don't need a mask but I do.

One of them, Mr. A:

• Noticed my gutter has a dent.
• Told me he had Covid last year and "It's like a cold, you can't catch it twice." 
• Looked at the neighbor's houses and told me what was wrong with their roofs and siding, which was delightful.

The other, Mr. B:

• Actually went up on the roof and took photos of the vents. He didn't use the drone he said he had in the truck. 
• Kept his distance and offered to get his mask out of the truck.
• Heard me say there are constant skittering noises; walked immediately to where he felt the squirrels are getting into the house and dancing on the heating vents.
• Asked to see the bathroom vent and thus admired the medical bathroom, which was delightful.

I certainly don't want to make a decision based on one man's evident immunity to colds, and I'm sure they both knew the vents were bad based on the age of the neighborhood. But I did place a shim in Mr. B's animal access hole area, and lo, today the shim was tossed aside.

So Mr. B gets the job. 

 

Party in the CIA

Weird Al Yankovic. Contemporary. Genius. The car Alexa, (inspired by my love for BNL and their peppy tunes and dark lyrics, and Boothby Graffoe and his sad songs with fluffy lyrics) served up a completely unprovoked Best of Weird Al playlist. I had heard most of his songs, starting with My Bologna on the Dr. Demento show. (I am still amazed other people were allowed to stay up late enough to hear Dr. Demento play gems like Dead Puppies.)

But one Weird Al song I hadn't heard was Party in the CIA. It is perfection. Perfect rhymes, perfect counterpart to the original song (Party in the USA), perfect juxtaposition of cheery pop music and brutality, perfect takedown of the CIA. 

Go here for the video, skip the ad, and use the lyrics below to sing along. (I would have linked to an ad-free lyric video, but not one had the correct lyrics.) Be warned, the downside to the video is that it does take the perfect balance of pop and brutality and tip it too far over to the brutality side.

I moved out to Langley recently
With a plain and simple dream
Wanna infiltrate some third-world place
And topple their regime

Those men in black with their matching suitcases
Where everything's on a need-to-know basis
Agents got that swagger
Everyone so cloak and dagger

I'm feelin' nervous but I'm really kinda wishing
For an undercover mission

That's when the red alert came on the radio
And I put my earpiece on
Got my dark sunglasses on
And I had my weapon drawn

So I get my handcuffs
My cyanide pills
My classified dossier

Tappin' the phones like yeah
Shreddin' the files like yeah
And then I rised all the enemy spies
I've got to neutralize today

Yeah, it's a party in the CIA
Yeah, it's a party in the CIA

I've done a couple of crazy things
That have almost gotten me dismissed
Like terminate some head of state
Who wasn't even on my list

Burn that microfilm buddy, will you
I'd tell you why but then I'd have to kill you
You need a quickie confession?
Well, start a water boarding session

No hurry on the south American dictator
I'll assassinate him later
That's when he walked right in my laser sights
And my silencer was on and my silencer was on
And another target's gone

Yeah, we've got our black ops all over the world
From Kazakhstan to Bombay
Payin' the bribes like yeah
Pluggin' the leaks like yeah
Interrogating the scum of the earth
We'll break them by the break of day!

Yeah, it's a party in the CIA
Yeah, it's a party in the CIA

Need a country to stabilize? (stabilize)
Look no further, we're your guys (we're your guys)
We've got snazzy suits and ties (suits and ties)
And a better dental plan than the FBI's

Better put your hands up and get in the van
Or else you'll get blown away
Stagin' a coup like yeah
Brainwashin' moles like yeah,
We only torture the folks we don't like
You're probably going to be OK

Yeah, it's a party in the CIA
Yeah, it's a party in the CIA

Not Missing Much

Work officially re-opened last week. I retired my bra-free denim shirt to conform to the revived dress code. 

You wouldn't think they would care what I wear on a Zoom call, but they say they do.

And then I steeled myself for the phone calls. "Ellen, where are you, it's a party and everyone's here and we're having a pot-luck breakfast." But the big reunion day came, and the single report from the office was that no one else was there.

Since then, some leaders have attended planning meetings in person, and my guess is that next month there's going to be a push to get everyone back into the expensive, recently re-designed buildings.

I think of Mom saying "If you're too sick for school then you're too sick to play." Well, if I'm too vulnerable for a concert then I'm too vulnerable for work.

I'm just rehearsing for a fight no one will have with me. It seems as if we'll all just stay propped up in our beds in pajama bottoms and fancy shirts. 

Number 386 in a Series

Yet another too-hasty Amazon order.

Luckily, it is tasty popcorn, made with the magic MS-defying olive oil.