Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

New Toy 2

This is the toy that Gary bought me, the one on which I have bestowed the honor of Official Birthday Gift, which means he can sit back the entire month of August and have no gift responsibilities whatsoever.

It is ideal. Perfect gift. It is me embodied in a present.

It is an electrified tennis-racquet-bug-swatter that you swing at bugs and it zaps them to death.

ZAP-IT Bug Zapper Rechargeable Bug Zapper Racket [sic], 4,000 Volt, USB charging Cable, 2 Pack.

The recent flooding has drowned all the bugs in the backyard, and I didn't want to hurt the bees in the front yard, so I started swinging randomly in the side yard and soon two bugs died a freakish death. I cackled. And I am not sorry. 

New Toy 1

Lately, there have been too many nights spent watching Gary watch television, so I thought of my friends who assemble Lego models for fun. I thought that might be a fun shared experience for Gary and I. 

I looked at some Lego models, then I wondered how much money my friends make. There was one Millennium Falcon Lego model that was  $700 dollars. That might be entirely wrong, because it was so expensive I couldn't see anything after the 7. I wasn't looking for anything starting with a 7.

Instead I found this non-Lego model of an articulated Visible Man, with rubbery flesh and sturdy plastic bones that snap together in a very satisfying way. They also un-snap fairly easily, but I think I might apply some glue if I get it positioned the way I want. And if course, the position I want is draped over the edge of the tub in the medical bathroom.

If we -- well, if Gary gets frustrated I can point out that the bag of parts is labelled "BODY BAG," which makes me smile. 

This Morning

One of the nice things about having a substantial mailbox is that you know when the mailman arrives, because you hear the clunk as the door closes. It also lets you know if you can stay in bed because your husband has gone out to get the mail instead of you for once in your life.

This morning I heard:

CLUNK - Scream - "Jesus!"

Had it been Scream - "Jesus!" - CLUNK I would have assumed that a severed head was in the mailbox.

CLUNK - "Jesus!" - Scream would be the second coming coincidental with the mail retrieval.  

But it was decidedly CLUNK - Scream - "Jesus!" which Gary then explained is the sound of a "dead" cicada on top of the mailbox springing to life and flying in Gary's face when the mailbox shut. 

Weekly Home Construction Update: 7/28

Here is my art all bundled up. Half the basement is still wrapped in plastic, waiting for the dust to settle.

Today was to be the day that I would set about putting things right, because yesterday was to be the day that we cleared the basement drainage issues.

That was not to be, because Wednesday our city got twelve inches of rain overnight. The basement flooded, of course, but so did the streets and highways all through the Saint Louis area. Those of us living by a river or in a valley were just stuck. Hence the basement workers couldn't get to us, and we couldn't get out. 

The rain is supposed to continue all week. which means my basement will stay jammed in Jenga mode until next Monday, when we'll try it again.

Duolingo Advice

When telephony began, back in the day, I found that the best way to communicate with the phone application was to sound very pissed off. My words became clipped, my consonants were sharp, the phone knew I meant business. 

I have now cracked a similar code for DuoLingo Russian. I have had trouble getting points for repeating words back into the application. To my ear, my mimicry was perfect, but I couldn't get full credit.

With my new technique I can now parrot the example exactly. As you might have guessed, it is to sound as much as I can like Natasha from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Just a little "Moose and Squirrel" mixed in and I get full points.

It seems obvious now that one should use a Russian accent to make Russian words sound more convincing.

лось и белка!

TV Screen Grabs

The first screen grab is from a campaign ad directed against candidate Trudy Busch Valentine,  accusing her of being a proud Queen of the elitist, racist Veiled Prophet organization.

I am about as liberal as they come, plus I am somehow tangentially pseudo-related to the man who swung down on the VP Ball and unmasked the VP himself, but I say if your father is an important Saint Louis business executive you are going to be VP Queen of Love and Beauty. You don't get to decline. Because it's not about you. It's about your father. Naming you junior Queen Poobah is small consolation that your brother inherits the seat in the board of the public utility or whatever. 

If Auggie Busch of Anheuser-Busch were still alive there is not a politician in Saint Louis who would risk his wrath by showing this ad. Craven!

============

The second screen grab was a recent CNN update: 'WHITE HOUSE EXPECTED TO NAME MONKEYPOX COORDINATOR."

They could have gone with "Monkeypox Czar" but no, they went with "Monkeypox Coordinator" as the new title for the Monkeypox Top Banana. Imagine that on your resume. 

Filter

Today I was in a Zoom call at work and I noticed that when I compared my image to the others in my call I was blurry. So blurry that I tried to wipe off my camera.

Not the camera. It was the "prettification" filter. Where non-work Zoom has filters that make you look like a cat, work Zoom has a filter for "Touch up my appearance." It's the Zoom version of Doris Day and her Vaseline on the camera lens. 

Somehow I have been slowly creeping my filter up until I was full blur filter, while The Young People at Work are filter-free.

Not Touched Up	Touched Up

I dragged the setting back down to reality, and that was unspeakable, so I compromised at half-blur. And made a mental note to apply eyebrow pencil while looking at Zoom instead of the bathroom mirror.

Also it is time to update my blog profile picture.

Duo Dentist

By a strange fluke Gary and I ended up with consecutive dental visits. We intended to go in the same car, but he wanted to leave an hour early to drive to the five (5) miles to the dentist. I convinced him to wait, but then a work problem blew up half an hour before the first appointment. I waved him on ahead and we took two cars, because the only thing worse than a work problem is working on a work problem with your husband tapping his foot. 

I patched the problem fast and still got to the dentist five minutes ahead of time. That's why I panicked a little when I didn't see his car in the lot. He finally showed with one minute to spare -- because he got lost. My fault, of course, because my ill-timed work problem had jarred his schedule and he made poor driving choices in his agitated state.

You know what the best dental anesthetic is? Having a work problem you still need to fully solve. I didn't even notice them pry off my temporary and jam in the permanent, I was so absorbed in what could be going wrong with my database.

As I was waiting for the crown to adhere I heard him down at the end of the hall explaining  how TOOTHBRUSHES work to a DENTAL HYGIENIST.

He left before I did, but I did get a parting "Bye!" called down the hall. So, sadly, not the great dental date I anticipated.

Close Encounter

I was in bed when Gary showed up at my bedroom door and whispered, "ellen you have to come see the raccoon babies on the patio they've been patting on the window and looking in at me."

Of course, I went to the back door and saw no baby raccoons at all. Gary flipped on the porch light, and indeed there were four wee raccoons. I thought they'd run, but two of they just wandered around in circles, one stared at me, and the last made a low and slow beeline to his mother by the tree in the middle of the yard.

We admired them, then Gary made the mistake of tossing food at them, which they saw as a barrage of peanut artillery, and they ran. 

Gary wanted to thank all the raccoons, and took the the chance to fill the feeding station by the tree. He returned from the tree way too quickly in every sense: in that it wasn't a long enough time and he was moving way too fast. 

"Yikes," he said, "Momma raccoon is not happy with me. I got out there and she didn't run: she stood and growled at me."

Sure, he was out there feeding her babies, and that's her job. She was jealous. Understandable. 

Cable Shenanigans

I know the rest of you stop suckling at the cable teat years ago, but Gary and I are happy paying outrageous amounts of money for poor service and unreliable options. Evidently they can't manage to supply both tvs with all the channels we pay for, or support my antiquated TiVo and Gary's now-dead new TiVo, or keep the phone, internet, or television up earlier this month while I was working from home. 

So the current situation us that we are paying top-tier prices for unreliable basic cable,  landline, and poor internet. We can get to tv things like HBO through the app on the iPad. 80% of the calls on the landline are spam, but I just can't see losing the landline. And AT&T installed superfast fiber on our street last year. 

Here is Gary's latest suggestion. Keep the cable company but go down to basic cable, plus phone and internet. Then, on top of that, subscribe to AT&T internet, to see if it really is better. Then on top of that, subscribe to HBO streaming and Netflix plus something that will give us live MSNBC, just in case, because, Rachel Maddow. So, you know, pay at least twice for some of the same services.

I flatly told him he was nuts, and we just need to do some more research. And have faith that new fiber lines will be better than old cables.  I am going to ask the neighbors what their setup is and start with that. I am sure we can cobble together a landline, breaking news, internet, and HBO/Netflix/Prime Video. 

How have you all solved this problem?

Weekly ... Home Construction Progress: 7/21

I paint in the basement. 

This is how the corner of the basement usually looks.

This is the same corner today.

That pink table with the paper towels is the new, inaccessible, temporary location of my painting table. 

After I scooted everything to that side of the basement I hung cement-dust-mitigating plastic sheets in front of it all.

This is all in preparation for next week's futile attempt at correcting the drainage in the basement. This time there will be jackhammering, removal of cement, placement of tubes, and also the loss of ten inches of floor space all along the wall.  

So, a two-week hiatus of the paint while my paint area is chaos.

Stop Asking Me

Okay, anyone not living in a house they own is familiar with the relentless "I WILL BUY YOUR HOUSE" mail solicitiation cards. They try so hard to convince me they are from an individual who took the time to write me a note. Ridiculous. And, as I say, relentless.

Here's my question. I sold Mom's house over a month ago. When do the cards stop? Do they ever stop? They began when I started renting out the house, I assumed they'd stop when I stopped renting it. 

It's so tempting to write back with a nice "handwritten" note and string them along. Or lie and tell them I sold the house FOR CASH to some other person with a more convincing note. But that would be wrong. Wrong, but satisfying.  

An Unfamiliar Transaction

I was at the McDonald's drive-through. The cashier asked for $16. I didn't hand her my card, I handed her a twenty, for no reason other than that wad of twenties and fives had been in my purse for three years and was going bad.

I put my purse back in order and only looked up when she said something. She was handing me my twenty back. 

I took it and then said, "Don't you need this?" 

She looked befuddled, pointed at herself, and mumbled something. I was still waving the twenty at her, and she shrugged and smiled and said something that might have been, "Well, okay, I'll take it." She had some kind of speech impediment. 

"That was weird," I thought. "Why wouldn't they expect me to pay for my meal? Maybe I gave her a fifty? But how would I get a fifty?" I drove away with my bag, got on the street, and it was only then I realized I must have given her two twenties. And that out of stupidity and stubbornness and a refusal to say "I can't understand you," I realised  I had just tipped the McDonald's cashier twenty dollars. 

If this pandemic is ever over I am going to need a course in how to re-integrate into society, like they give to long-term convicts and coma patients. "This is how you count money. This is what it means if someone gives you money back. Also, heads up, there are no more phone booths, the money is all different, and TV comes through a tube in the ground."

Today In Science

The nice thing about science is that it constantly changes, so even if you thought you knew a thing, wait a few years and you find you were wrong. For example, this week I was reading up on serial killer Richard Speck, as you do, and found that they have debunked the theory that  men born with an extra Y chromosome are more inclined to be criminals. That was canon to me. Many's the time I have looked at a sketchy man and thought, "There's an extra chromosome in there." 

Richard Speck's chromosome led me to cat genetics, and I am probably the last of you to discover that tortoiseshell and calico cats are almost always female. 

The first photos from the Webb telescope came out last week and that science confused me. I don't know much about the Big Bang, aside from the Barenaked Ladies song ("It's expanding ever outward but one day / It will pause and start to go the other way"). Somehow, I think if there was an explosion the oldest star should be on the edge of the expanding universe and those stars would be increasingly far apart, but the first photo from the new telescope shows the oldest spot as a place with a lot of galaxies crammed together.  A bang suggests to me there would just be a hole filled with debris in the center. Was it a bang or a burp? Seems like it should be the Big Burp Theory.

I predict we wait a few years and then Wikipedia will tell me I am right: we had it backwards.

Suicide Prevention Hotline

Much is being said about the launch of the official new emergency phone number: 988, which is specifically for people contemplating suicide.

When i briefly contemplated suicide during my six-month depression, no special phone number would have done any good. The Depression in my head might have been very good at telling jokes, programming, driving to and from work, but there's no way it would have let me dial three numbers to speak to someone about suicidal thoughts. Especially considering it spent every minute that I was alone telling me I didn't deserve to live. 

I've always thought I got away from it by talking to my friend Carol and her husband, and that was the turning point. It's more likely the depression was letting up anyway, evidenced by the fact that it let me talk to someone, finally, even if only to tell them I was An Awful Person. 

I cannot even imagine overcoming the Voice and calling a stranger, unless it was during that moment at 3am when I'd wake up about a half minute before the depression did, and then the depression would probably hang up before anyone answered the phone. 

Maybe other people would call before the Depression would be strong enough to hang up the phone.

Conspiracy Theories

Twice this week I have found myself being the voice of reason.

I, too, just recently watched The Staircase, and yes it is exciting to think Ivana Trump died from being pushed down a staircase, but she didn't. She fell. Or she had a heart attack and fell, or tripped and fell, or was attacked by an owl and fell. 

And if you listen to the MSNBC pundits you would think the Secret Service never erases test messages, that they have kept every exchange for every day except January 5th and 6th. It's the Secret Service. Not the Full Disclosure Service. I'm more surprised they keep them than ai am they erased them.

It's no fun being the voice of reason, but someone has to do it.

Exchange with Gary

Gary asked Alexa, "Alexa, how hot is it outside?"

Alexa replied, "It is 93 degrees."

Gary immediately went into the little guest room where I now spend all my time. "OH MY GOD IT IS A MILLION DEGREES IN HERE HOW CAN YOU STAND IT."

"My room is perfectly comfortable." I have had this conversation with him before. Usually he starts pressuring me to install a ceiling fan.

"IF ONLY YOU WOULD INSTALL A FAN IN THIS ROOM."

I was reasonable. "You can install a fan when I'm dead."

"IF YOU DIE I WILL INSTALL A FAN FOR MY WHORE, ONLY SHE WON'T NEED A FAN BECAUSE SHE'LL BE NAKED."

This was a new tactic and it caught me by surprise. I laughed instead of escalating. I should leave a note under the mattress in my room for his future naked whore.

Weekly Paint Progress 7/14

This week the Blue Heeler went from this:

... to the right half of this.

I don't know. I wish I could have done the Blue Heeler with the same light hand I used on the Pit Bull. 

Well, there's always the next one. No more photos. Perhaps I'll go back to my croquet ball again, or my foot. 

Hush Puppies

Sunday night I had no energy, and I knew that all the fruits and vegetables in the house would not give me the energy I required ... yet an order of hush puppies would. Hush puppies are not on the Mediterranean Diet. I had to order them through Grubhub, along with enough other fried fish to make it worthwhile.

I have had fried fish food for every meal since, and I am feeling lots of energy, and also lots of bloating. I woke up this morning and I tell you I had to lift my wattle off my chest with two hands before I could roll out of bed.

Well, no. That's not true. But I am conscious of the wattle. It is making its presence known. 

Back to blackberries and granola this morning.

Brains are Melting

I recently noticed that the handmade brain soaps in the medical bathroom seem to sweat. They are coated with a dewy film even if no one has used them.

(Eeewwww.)

This led me to check if soap can expire, and yes, damnit, soap can expire. 

"When it comes to natural and handmade soaps, the expiration date is usually around a year. That’s because natural ingredients can become rancid or moldy. When you buy soap from small soap makers, only buy as much as you can use within a year. In fact, some handmade soap makers recommend using their soaps within three months of purchase."

Well, damnit. Those brains lived and died utterly unappreciated by anyone but me. I think I'll buy more and store it in the freezer. That sounds smart - of course it assumes that I'll have friends over again, someday. You know, I might just buy more and leave it out for myself. I've enjoyed it.

Review: Cape Fear

I have never wanted to watch Cape Fear. A bully threatens a nice family? No thank you.

Yet still, I found myself watching it last weekend. I specifically opted for the old black and white version, thinking it would be more subtle. 

The ending is not satisfying at all. Now I almost want to watch the 1991 version, to see if they resolve it differently.

And to see if they kept this special Saint Louis shout-out in the new version:

Recipe

Gary creates a weekly salad and eats it for dinner, lunch, and sometimes breakfast. He's very creative. This is the recipe for a typical salad. 

The base is a pre-made Chicken Caesar salad from Dierberg's. This accounts for about 20% of the finished salad. Then Gary layers on the items detailed a year ago in this post: blue cheese dressing, feta cheese, Parmesan, croutons, grape tomatoes, plus red, yellow, and orange bell peppers. And croutons. 

Last week, though, he started with a base of an Applebee's chicken /strawberry balsamic salad, which had a completely different flavor profile. Gary tasted it after he had doused it in the dressing and cheese and stirred in the peppers, and felt that what it needed was a smattering of white grapes and Mega-Omega Trail mix.

Because walnuts, mango, almonds, cranberries, and pumpkin seeds and grapes match so well with balsamic vinegar and blue cheese dressing. Not to mention that I had already portioned out 30 grams of this trail mix  and added exactly five chocolate chips to each tiny snack baggie.

He chewed on it for a day until he finally had to say that a salad of chicken, blue cheese dressing, feta, Parmesan, croutons, grape tomatoes, grapes, bell peppers, croutons, walnuts, mango, almonds, cranberries, pumpkin seeds, and chocolate chips was not tasty.

He fixed it by mixing in another "normal" salad and thus diluting the trail mix / fruit salad flavors. I must say, this salad obsession makes me glad that he didn't stick with his pledge to cook for us in his retirement.

Two New Shows

It is summer, the TiVo is not recording anything but old sitcoms and talk shows, it is sticky, and thus the bar is low. These two Netflix shows have given me some pleasure.

Is It Cake?

Episode One - "Ugh, this show is so cheesy." 

Episode Four - "Oh, this show is so delightfully cheesy!"

Bakers make hyper-realistic cakes that look like everyday objects, and the challenge is to pick out the cake from an assortment of real objects. The satisfying payoff is when the host plunges a knife into one of the objects to reveal it is actually a cake. It is also enjoyable to hear how many times the host can put a new spin on the question, "Is it cake?"

The G Word with Adam Conover 

Adam Conover from Adam Ruins Everything has tamped down his hair a little and set out to educate us on Government, starting with a surprising cameo guest. It's a little like his old show but with a lot more cursing. (A lot. Especially during the weather plans episode. Hysterical cursing and borderline panic.)

To be fair, I haven't finished either series, so both could still disappoint. Right now though, I could binge either of these shows.

Rewriting the Novel: Extra Time

I have been a lazy slug of late. I just been entertaining myself with the news, old movies, the guitar, organizing the garage, and all the other things that I can do with my time not that I'm letting the book stay fallow. 

It hasn't even been two months that I've been ignoring it. Some people say you have to let a draft sit for six weeks, some for six months. Maybe I'll do a six month wait after draft 18. I was a little worried I might just drop the book entirely, but this week I took half a page of notes on what want to emphasize when I get back to it.

My big worry is that it will be like all the paintings I've left with significant problems, and I tell myself I'll go back and fix them later, but I never do. So then, what, I'll add novel-writing to cheese-making and basket-weaving to my set of unused skills?  

My alternative big worry is that like Jerry, I will die with an unfinished novel. I think I'll start on the next draft this coming week.

Weekly Paint Progress: 7/7

This week the Blue Heeler went from this:

... to this.

Feels like the top left needs to be darker, and the nose lost some of its molding. I don't know.  Perhaps I should just stop. 

Zip-up Bras: a Long-term Review

Remember the zip-up bra I got in September of last year? I still love it. Well, I love them. I have it in every color but pink. 

It has been reliable and perfect until I trimmed a hedge last weekend. There was a lot of stooping and swiveling. I already knew the zipper doesn't do well with tossing and turning: the few times I've slept in it I'll wake up and the zipper clasp is lowered to a 1970's Bob Mackie level of cleavage.

However, last weekend I twisted enough trimming the hedge that when I made one last swivel to get into the fridge for a drink, the bra sprang entirely open. It felt like my breasts leapt with joy into the cool refrigerator air, poor things.

I still love the zip-up bra even with this forgivable lapse. 

Fireworks

Last night Gary discovered that fourth of July fireworks and The Clapper do not mix well.

Independence Day

This is going to be a rough month for patriotic pride.

Not too happy about my state.

Not too happy about my nation either. Evidently the only the only ethical government official is this girl in her twenties.

I forgave her for using "clavicles" and not "clavicle" until I discovered I was the one who was wrong.

I still forgive her for her relentless use of "hung" and not "hanged". That's how pleased I am with her. Otherwise this would have been a bleak Independence day.

Team Name

We are all reorganized now at work. I have two bosses now, one for my skill development (both work skills and god help me, social skills) and then another for my task assignments. All the people under these two bosses are then broken up into "high functioning teams" that are then assigned to projects.  There was a lot of team binding thrust on us the first time we tried this: not so much this time around. 

However, as a team we are expected to get a team name. I suggested "The Flying Wallendas," another high functioning team.

While we were discussing on Microsoft Teams the Wallenda family, and if they were good role models, and how many deaths per performance would knock you out of the role model category, and how St. Louis has its own branch of Wallendas at Circus Flora -- while we were doing that our development boss was looking up gifs of the Flying Wallendas and came up with a clip of Karl Wallenda walking a tightrope. 

He did not watch the entire thing before posting it.

And then he did.

And then "NOOOOO! Don't look at that! Not the message I wanted to send AT ALL." Because of course it was one of the times things did not go well for the Wallendas. Karl fell off the tightrope, bounced off a taxi, hit the pavement. 

Of course that sealed the deal, we had a team name just so our boss would relive his embarrassment every time he had to refer to us.

Just yesterday it occured to me Cheech and Chong would be another high performing team. Don't know if that will knock the Flying Wallendas out of the competition.

 

Poor Lina

I give you the tale of Lina Medina, a GIRL who had a BABY at FIVE. 

Evidently the poor thing had precocious puberty, which seems like progeria but just for your reproductive system. 

Pics or it didn't happen, you say? I give you pics then. Pics for your nightmares.

And to think I walked around in my youth being afraid of spontaneous human combustion, when I could have worried about this.  

 

Key Fob

 

I've used the new car so rarely that I've only been out after dark twice.

I sometimes imagine going to a mall, or the opera, or a party, or any of the nighttime activities my friends are doing. I picture setting off for my car across a dark parking lot and gripping my keyring with the keys spiking through my fingers, in the futile ersatz-weapon fashion, and I realize I can't do that anymore, because the new car has a key fob, not a key. The key fob is all bulky and round. Not good for eye-gouging at all.

I suppose I could gather up four house keys, but I only have two now, not enough for my four finger-slots. I suppose I could put two legitimate weapons on my key ring. Like, say, a cute little  shiv. And then a wee pointy taser, maybe? Or a ring-sized strap, because the first thing that happens is you drop your keys. 

I do have that panic button on the key fob, though. 

These are the thoughts that cross my mind when I have been stuck at home too long. Overly dramatic anxiety pageants.