Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

High Pressure Trivia

Friend #3 and I were invited to a trivia match by Friend Anne and her new team at work. I went in thinking it was very nice to be invited to trivia by, essentially, a group of strangers (plus Anne). When we got there we discovered that Anne, #4, and I were there as ringers, specifically invited to put a W in their column. They were very nice and paid for our seats and our food. 

I did better than usual. When no one else could answer, I knew who invented the steel plow blade (John Deere) and the location of the world’s largest bat (Louisville, KY), I identified the HP logo sans initials, and I knew Sopranos was the first HBO show to win an Emmy - though Friend #3 questioned my answer, and stubbornly talked me out of it. I was robbed of that answer, but still we lost by three points, not just by one.

We were in the lead until one of the final rounds, in which we were asked to identify all the McDonald’s mascots. It was brutal. I actually joked that the green blob character was O’Grimace, and if anyone had written that down we might have only lost by two points.

I felt bad we didn’t get the win, especially since this was our first outing as Trivia Hired Guns.

Teacups: Done, Because I Have Run Out of Patience

I am done (so so done) with the teacups.

It is odd. The teacups seem to follow you with their eyes! No, but they do look very different depending on the lighting and the orientation. I hated it in the basement, I liked it upstairs in the kitchen, and I like it much more when it is sideways.

Usually when I turn something sideways, the flaws jump right into view. I think I like this one sideways because it puts the middle of the left teacup in the optical center, and the middle of the left teacup is the best part. Only, I grew tired of the gold-on-blue pattern and I got sloppy, which is fine, because it isn't like the Medicis are drumming their fingers waiting for this.

Also the highlights on the cut glass bowl should be brighter and sharper, but they just would not adhere. I know there are three oil painting rules:

1. Slow Over Fast - paint slow drying things last  (like white highlights)
2. Fat over Lean - you have to add oil for each new layer (thins things out so they won't crack)
3. Thick over Thin - and there's my problem. If I follow the previous rule and  add oil to paint the white highlights, that will thin them down so much they won't make an impact. I suppose I'm supposed to make two layers of increasingly thin white.

Ugh. So that means I am not done.

Stockpot

A tedious post ... In Which I Document My Purchases. (Ah - if only I had thought of that category thirteen years ago.)

The induction stove only works with ferrous metals, so one thing I had to give away was Mom's giant aluminum stockpot. The replacement was a $15 Walmart stockpot.

That stockpot lasted five years, until this past Friday when I burned some apple pie filling in it. I went at it with the Brillo pad until I remembered that Facebook had been set on me buying a gorgeous stockpot via one of their ads. A stunning, heavy stockpot that would match all my other cookware. I scrubbed a little more before I said goodbye, old stockpot, you served me well this five years on, and we had many soups together, but now you have burned the apple pie filling and I can't look at you any longer. There are younger, hotter stockpots to be had.

And then, it turned into one of those Missed Connections personals. I had seen this mouth-watering photo of a stockpot, and I didn't go for it, and missed my shot at long-term stockpot happiness, because Facebook would not show me that stockpot photo again. After a day of searching I put this on Facebook:

Facebook kept mum. So I gave up on the Facebook Tease Stockpot (probably some bogus Russian stockpot put there to foment discontent), and paid an old-school in-person visit to the Bed Bath and Beyond. I found a friendly knockoff of an outrageously priced All-Clad Bells and Whistles stockpot set. Honestly, this one was a third of the All-Clad price. It was also three times the price of my original Walmart stockpot, as if there’s some stockpot logarithmic scale in which each level of stockpot is three times the price of the previous level. 

I don't make bulk corn, or even bulk pasta, but I can see throwing bones and aromatics in the insert and later lifting it out instead of trying to strain 12 quarts of stock.

And yes, I did take careful measurements, first thing.

 

Teacup Progress

So this was the start of the teacup painting:

After the first glaze I just hated it:

But then, adding the cranberry glaze on the bowl and the cream glaze on the cups perked it up:

The blue ellipse on the cup is wonky on the right, and somehow adding the blue to the table threw off the bottom of the right teacup. The line at the right edge of the cast shadow is accurate but now wrong, somehow. Cast shadows.  Why are they so hard?

But you know what's easy? Highlights. The bowl needs cut-glass highlights, that'll be fun, and the cups need more color, especially in the shadows. And I have to wait days before I can do it because the glaze has to dry. Maddening.

Das Tut Mir Leid Calypso

"Das tut mir leid" is about the only bit of German I know. It is from the Sarcastic Grandmother dialect of German, and it means, “Oh, poor pouty baby, sucks to be you.”

I was a pouty baby today when I got my copy of David Sedaris’ Calypso from Amazon. "CALYPSO," it said on the dustjacket, “vom autor des weltbestsellers NAKED.”

”Nooooo,” I whispered. Nein!

I turned to a random page. 

“Tiffany ... Cool. Stoned. Hacke. Durchgeknallt.” 

(Tiffany ... Cool, Stoned, Hoe, Girl Interrupted.) [sic]

It is all in German. I should have been alerted when I looked at the price, but I didn't look at the price, or the faint, tiny German text on the image of the cover.

I'm a little verärgert.

Typing Diagnosis

Since October, when we moved into the new office and I got a laptop, my typing has been horrendous. People at work make comments like, "Who wrote defect summary 87 - oh, it was Ellen, I can tell from the typos."

It's as bad as when Caroline felt my typos warranted an MRI.

I've been blaming my new keyboard, but that's a dodge. The typos are equally bad no matter which laptop I'm on.

Finally, I realized what I'm doing wrong. If I'm using a normal keyboard, I'm sitting erect and watching my hands as I type, but if I'm using a laptop or iPad I am reclined and ignoring my hands.

One would think that if I could teach myself finger-style guitar, I could learn to touch-type. Perhaps I should take up typing as a hobby.

Placebo Revisited

This just happened: I found a bottle of turmeric among my medicines. "What on earth?" I thought. "Why do I have a bottle of turmeric?"

Side effects of turmeric: loss of memory of events that happened less than a month ago.

It would seem that burping up a capsule of the stuff was enough to put me off turmeric. I did not have enough success to get the delusion we all get when drugs work: "I feel better so I don't need these drugs that are the reason I feel better."

Work Ellen

One of the reasons I've been quite happy that Gary quit his job five and three-quarters years ago is that I don't have to deal with Work Gary anymore. Work Gary was an ass. He would come home angry, yell at me, I'd ask why he was angry, and it always turned out he was angry at someone at work. But of course he couldn't yell at them, so he'd end up yelling at me. I would always point that out with, "I am not the person who is making you angry. Take it out on the people at work. I am not a punching bag."

Not that he's retired, the stress ball has been passed to me. I'm the one yelling and having nightmares. I've been routinely annoyed about work the past month, not pleasant to Gary, and at one point he said, "Take it out on the people at work. I am not your punching bag."  Touché, mon chere, touché.

Gary is now the one studiously avoiding conflict. Case in point: Wednesday his car battery was dead, and in the past some of our most epic fights happened while trying to use jumper cables, with the combination of Fear of Death and our main fight trigger: Lack of Knowledge. Add in a touch of Man Shame and every fight was inevitable. This time, he bought new cables, researched how to use them, gathered supplies, put on his headlamp, and all I had to do was start an engine. It was amazing. No fight at all.

I Brave the Fifty Three Hour Brisket

Remember when I was too chicken to cook beef? I couldn't bring myself to brine a brisket for almost a week and then cook it in the sous-vide for two days. Well, I am braver now.

I think I balked at the five days of brining, because my new recipe requires only a half hour marinade and then two days of sous-vide, followed by three hours in the oven.

I know it will be cooked through. I think the texture will be great. I'm sure it's going to taste bad, because I used the marinade I had on hand, which was a Lime-based recipe, but the sous-vide directions had me add liquid smoke. Smoke plus lime? I can see a lime-flavored barbecue chicken or shrimp, but beef seems strange.

------ 53 Hour Pause for Brisket to Finish -----

The texture was excellent, but I couldn’t taste the marinade or the liquid smoke, which might have been a good thing. Since it needed sauce, I made barbecue sauce from scratch and we couldn’t eat it (I added too much vinegar, somehow.) Luckily I had enough self-doubt to serve that on the side.

Mph. It was okay. Still not as good as any pork product in the sous-vide.

 

Snow

So, last year we didn't get the snowblower out at all. We've taken to storing it in the basement instead of the garage. There was an anticipated snow earlier this year so I brought it upstairs, but that ended up being light enough to melt.

So, now we have actual snow. I am wild with excitement. I'm looking through the larder and making plans for all the meals for the next three days. In additon, I was very excited to blow snow tonight.

We disagree about when to use the snowblower: once every 7 inches (me, so 3 passes for the forecast 24 inches) or once at the end (Gary, who thinks you can blow off just the top layer). We agreed to disagree and that Gary would run the snow removal process. That will be fun to watch.

I'm also having a lot of fun watching the news, because I am always tickled when our weather report leads the news on CNN.

I don't think this has happened before though: it snowed enough to bring Jim Cantore to town.

Value Study

So here's the latest on my oil painting glazing project. This is for the still life of the napkin, teacups, and the cranberry glass bowl (it's on its side leaning against the wall).

All I'm doing right now is the value study, in which you paint a black and white version of your painting. I keep working on it and it's pretty overworked at the moment.

I still need to make two parts darker, and one part less dark. Can you find them? The answer is below the image.

Less dark: the, um, evocative crease in the napkin that runs from the top middle to the middle right needs to be lighter. I should probably back off on the middle of the napkin where the cups meet as well.

Darker: Somehow I completely missed the shadow that the cup on the left casts on the cup on the right. I goes halfway up the cup. I drew it: you can see the line. Plus, I need to raise where the edge of the table is, otherwise the bowl must be hanging off a nail in the wall to be where it is.

Of course, I selected two cups which are essentially white, a white napkin, and a black background, so I'm going to be challenged finding some colors to glaze on top of what's there.

What Went Wrong With My Last Apple Pie

Hestia, Greek goddess of the hearth, was chatting with her brother Hades. They could see me baking an apple pie in Missouri from their perch on Mount Olympus.

”Jesus, I hate her,” Hestia sighed. “She’s so smug about her apple pie.”

“Jesus?” Hades asked, "What does 'Jesus' mean?"

"I don't know. It's some slang humans use. Still, look at her, thinking she's so good at pies. Let's mess with her."

Hades giggled, gestured, and suddenly the properties of water on Earth changed so that the four tablespoons of water that have always been sufficient for a double crust were no longer enough.

"Ha HAH!" Hestia laughed, "Look at her, all confused. 'Durr, this was enough water last time.' Now she's putting the dough in the refrigerator for thirty minutes to rest. There is no WAY that pie crust will work."

Back on Earth, I asked Alexa to set a timer for thirty minutes.

Hestia demanded Hades find out who I was talking to. Hades got on line and told her that Alexa is an in-home assistant that people use, sometimes, to set timers, and the she is not actually Greek.

When the timer went off I assembled the pie. I knew it was doomed, so I didn't even bother making a lattice. I stuck it in the oven and had Alexa set another timer for the first thirty minutes.

Hestia cackled and whispered to my Alexa, "Alexa, cancel all timers."

"Canceling all timers," Alexa obediently whispered back.

Luckily, after I cleaned up the kitchen I asked Alexa how much time was left.

"You have no timers."

"FUCK." I said. Hades and Hestia high-fived.

I yelled, "Alexa, SET A TIMER for ... for ... (sigh) fifteen minutes!"

"Setting timer for -"

"Oh shut up." I was mad. I was even madder a minute later after I accidentally knocked the whipped cream canister off the top shelf of the refrigerator, and it fell on my kitchen floor, popped its cap, and the nozzle broke off.

"DAMN. IT." Then I set about to fix it, since Gary had said he had been looking forward to Apple Pie with Whipped Cream.

I put the canister in the sink, pushed the nozzle back on, and got a faceful of propellant. And the nozzle fell off.

Hestia snorted, "Whippets! Just say no to drugs!"

Hades said, "Nice one! I didn't even see you do that."

"Huh? I thought you did that." Then they both doubled over laughing when they realized the whipped cream was entirely my fault.

So here is my pie. No lattice. The edges are burnt because the crust protector didn't go on at the right time. No whipped cream to hide it.  And frankly, that is pie sand around the edges, not pie crust.

Cursed. Cursed pie. No more pies for me.

 

2018 Year in Review

Farewell, 2018, the Year of Hobbies, Home Repair, and Amusements.

Well I almost stopped Hobby 1: this blog, because I forgot the key finding from Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: the smaller the topic, the easier it is to write. And the more tedious it is to read, I am sure, but for now I'm on this strange daily post bobsled and I cannot get off.

I went on vacation and was inspired to work on Hobby 2: the guitar. The year began with the doubled-up vacations to the Rock Boat and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. That visit inspired me to pick up my guitar and up my finger-picking game. I am not making steady progress there. One day I will sound glorious, and the next I can't tell if I am more twangy or more plinky. I am doing it, though.

Speaking of vacation: I wrote that I lost my passport card and a pair of earrings on that trip. A week later I found the earrings in my trash can, and a month later I found the passport card slid under the seat in the car we used to return from the airport. So, sorry NOLA, for falsely accusing you.

Now it's been almost a year since I went on that vacation. Instead of taking any mini-vacations we spent August and September shunting money into the house. There was the new mailbox, plus the landscaping wall, and then there was the less conspicuous consumption: the attic insulation, toilet, and the termite protection racket.

A trivia game in the summer got me started on Hobby 3: oil painting. That's working out well, if slowly. I'm about half-done with the value study for the teacups. It's nice to try glazing, because it requires that you wait between coats, so instead of feeling guilty that you haven't painted today, instead you can say "I would have painted today but it's still wet."

Speaking of trivia, this was the year we finally won the United Way Trivia match. That was probably the high point in the year of trivial amusements, even though we saw the Frank Lloyd Wright house, concerts by Cowboy Mouth and Lyle Lovett, Guster, Squirrel Nut Zippers, and Steven Page and his Trio.

Finally, I have to acknowledge the activity that used up almost all of my husband's time: hating on the President of the United States. While I was a part-time hobbyist hater (Hobby 4), Gary took to it like it was his job, sending out an average of six Facebook posts a day. Since we avoided the Women's March because we were avoiding the flu, our protest schedule dwindled down to seeing Kathy Griffin when she came in with her World Tour. Other than our aborted attempt to go to the anti-Attorney General rally, I didn't do much protesting. We voted as hard as we could, though.

When you spend a year and voting is the most significant thing you can point to, when the rest of the year is typified by they way you scream I LOVE YOU at the toilet every time you evacuate your bowels (and I do), then that is a shallow life. Perhaps I will find use in the coming year.

Apple Pie Post

Remember how I was complaining that I had trouble making pie crust? On a whim, I decided to make a pie the other day, to fight off the staycation boredom.

I did everything the same as always, only this time I decided to step further into Overworking than Underworking. As I was working it, there was a magical spot when I felt the pie crust get tired. It was just like when the pasta dough gets silky, or the choux dough gets oozy.

Of course, I didn't have anywhere enough apples to make enough apple filling, so I threw in frozen blueberries to make up the difference, and I combined two filling recipes together just to further doom it to failure.

 It. Was. Perfect.

Gary proclaimed it both the Best Pie He Ever Had and the Christmas Pie Miracle.

I tried to recreate it today, and while the crust was again amazing, and the lattice work even more even, I tried to economize and got the little Honeycrisps in the plastic bag instead of the individual ones as big as my head. I stuck with one filling recipe BUT I cut it while warm, so the bottom crust got soggy. However, Gary will not bit The Hand That Feeds Him Pie, so he said the new one was even better and more miraculous. It is a New Year's Eve Miracle.

Palette Pants

I know some painters are tidy, and they clean their brushes on a soft dry cloth. I am lazy, and I clean my brush on my old black jeans.  They are from 30 pounds ago, so they weren't doing anything productive anyway. Same for the shirt. Now that I’ve been painting for months I wish I had pressed my too-tight white jeans into service instead: that would be a glorious colorfest.

I know some painters wear smocks to protect their clothing, but that seems inefficient to me. Why not just combine the clothing AND the smock AND the soft dry cloth?

I am sad to say that putting on the painting pants was the only artistic thing I did today. I meant to paint for a few hours, but I never got to it.

 

Christmas Eve

I can never remember

     if the 24th of December

is the Big Day or the Eve.

    No one would ever believe

 my easy memory jog:

       the White Christmas prologue

the one they never play

        with its reference to LA.*

*(But it's December the twenty-fourth
And I am longing to be up North.)

 

Review: Mary Poppins Returns

I cried at the Mary Poppins Returns trailer. Somehow, I thought that was a fluke. I was still excited to see the movie.

First twenty minutes? No tears. Big girl. Mary Poppins descends from the heavens, the same scene that made me cry in the trailer? Tears. I let them flow.

Next twenty minutes. More tears flowed.

Children sing about Dead Mom. Many tears. This movie is right next to Babe on the List of Movies To Avoid If Your Mom is Dead.

The rest of the movie? Heartwarming thing happens, tears, dance number, tears, Dick Van Dyke shows up, many many tears.

It was ridiculous. My shirt got wet. I had a headache the day after from dehydration. A Mary Poppins Hangover.

I have NO idea why. The original doesn't make me cry. I think they did something subliminal,  like they did in the Exorcist. Split-second frames from Hallmark Card commercials. Sickos.

Another Thing That Happened at the Dentist: Tumeric

The visit to the dentist was just a gold mine for blog posts.

The dental assistant heard me joke about how Gary and I both can no longer sit down or stand up without grunting or moaning.

"Tumeric," she said, authoritatively.

"Advil," I thought, authoritatively.

But then later I thought, my little aches and pains don’t seem worthy of a heavy-hitter like Advil. And since the receptionist backed her up, and since it cost less than five bucks, I bought the Tumeric pills (since the thought of a mouthful of Tumeric right from the spice tin was very off-putting).

When I Googled "debunk Tumeric," I found this article from Science-Based Medicine that suggests that a large percentage of Tumeric promises are bogus, but they are investigating if it has anti-inflammatory properties and if it might be helpful for skin cancer.

So, I will let you know if it is useless.

I Am a Big Girl at the Dentist

Years ago, a dentist tried to pull off a temporary crown without numbing it first. He only tried a moment before I waved him off.

 

But, that was ten years ago, and I was a baby about dental things then. I went in for a temporary crown replacement today, and I decided – given what happened to Gary years ago – I would avoid the Novocaine and just gut it out.

 

The assistant grabbed the temporary, wiggled it, and it fell out. “That's nothing!” I thought,”Why have I been such a baby?”

 

Little did I know the fun was just beginning. The rest of it was … not painful … but unpleasant. You know that feeling when someone applies a cold adhesive to virginal gum tissue? Oh, you don't? See, you haven't had a crown replaced while sober. I mean, it didn't really hurt, just that my sensitive gums were very raw and touchy.

 

The assistant and dentist were very good about letting me know what things were going to feel like. By the end, so many things had been puffed and painted on my tooth stump that it ceased to care.

 

Still, I did feel proud of myself at the end.

Christmas Facade

I knew that adding a Christmas tree would tip our clutter level into Hoarder Zone, so before I brought in the tree I de-cluttered. I did it just so I could stand in the house for a moment and have a pretty Christmas before it became swamped with games and baking supplies and gift assembly.

So here it is.

And it is a lie. Because I knew it was fleeting, and because I knew I could get that satisfaction from just standing in one corner, I arranged the room so that I couldn't see the other corners: the ones where I stowed all the junk. Follow the red arrows to see the hidden shame of:

The hearth, where I stashed the gifts and Gary's Exercise Ball / Footstool:

The dirty microwave, where I put the baking supplies that would have cluttered up my tidy pantry:

And the top of the refrigerator, where we keep All Of The Carbohydrates. Oh, all right, that isn't a stash, that's actually where we keep all the carbs all the time.

 

Because I Got High On Caffeine

This all started because I woke up with a headache. I took some of Gary’s Migrane Excederin. You know what’s in that? Caffeine. I’ve been off the C-Drug for years. It hit me hard.

Then I saw that longtime blog reader Catherine made this ...

... and of course I had to search “King Arthur Flour Cinnamon Star” to find the recipe and some video demonstrations. The recipe suggests you use potato flour. 

This is where things really went of the rails.

It called for potato flour, but I opted to use the substitute, Potato Buds, because yet another type of flour would have maxed out my Flour Palette. Cake four, bread flour, pastry flour, whole wheat versions of each, a bleached and unbleached version of each, plus almond flour and oatmeal flour. But, no potato flour.

So then I thought, “Why not have every type of flour? It’s Christmas. Treat yourself!” I was as high a bipolar methhead on LSD. Caffeine! So to organize all my flours I went to Tupperware.com and bought almost all of the Modular Mates sizes. How much did I spend? I am ashamed to say this, but I think it’s an important step in my recovery: I spent over almost $200. I know. I’m calling them Monday at 7:30 am to cancel, if I can, otherwise i’m eating the shipping costs and sending it back.

Why send it back? Because my caffeine high only crashed after I went to eBay and got more of it used, for much less money (plus much more tasty, tasty BPA since I'm sure its all thirty years old). Sellers across the country are shipping me Tupperware modules in the discontinued Hunter Green. Only, I can’t say if I’m even close to having the number I need because I ordered and cancelled so many eBay orders that I can’t tell what’s coming. I can’t tell, people. 

I can see why the Mormons banned the bean. It will F you up.

 

 

 

 

Mall Shopping

This is the Scale of Futility:

10: Clicking Unsubscribe. 10 out of 10 Most Futile Things to Do.

9: Shopping at the mall for something your grandmother had forty years ago that you want right now. Almost as futile as unsubscribing.

 I just got back from the mall. 

I went on a fool's errand to find these:

They are slips for your pants. I’m not going to wear my gauzy pants immediately, but I thought, “Since I am at the mall anyway trying to find that cute scarf/wrap/jacket I saw here FOUR years ago in the SUMMER, perhaps I can find something else that any sensible person could find on the internet.”

Of course, I found neither item, so instead of the cute scarf/wrap thing I wore my elegant long scarf I bought thirty years ago that I have never worn because I bought it at TJ Maxx on the clearance table and I have always strongly suspected it was a table runner.

Scarf? Table runner? You decide.    

Oil Painting Lack of Progress

Well, I have utterly screwed myself with my painting. Instead of working on my “teacup on a white napkin” opus, I've turned instead to recreating one of my favorite photos of Gary: Gary at Bath.

And of course, painting someone I love has all kinds of extra baggage, plus I'm trying a glazing technique instead of a wet-on-wet technique, and I've just aimed too high. (Glazing = long and tedious and unfamiliar, wet-on-wet = immediate gratification.) I just can't get started with it.

I need to work on the eyes and mouth and hair so it looks like Gary. I don't particularly care if the Roman statue looks like Bacchus. The tea cups, on the other hand, looks just like teacups lying on their sides.

(What’s the round thing at the top? It’s the red bowl with a cast shadow to the right. I put it back.) I’m going to switch it up: glaze the teacups and scribble Gary out in the familiar wet-in-wet. The glazing is extra complicated because it looks like my transparent colors are opaque and some opaque ones came out of the tube transparent.

I really need to stop trying new things with the paints. I need the painting equivalent of playing “This Land is Your Land” on the guitar. Something easy I already know how to do.

No Longer Undefeated at Trivia

Anne assembled much of the first-place winning trivia team for a small local trivia match in Pacific, Missouri. I came in addled because the GPS had taken me on a forty-five minute long trek through every unlit windy back highway in the outer rural environs. It got to the point I laughed hysterically at every hairpin turn.

It was a small contest in a small Catholic school. We really expected to win.

We lost. We lost to Table Four by four points. They got an 84, we got 80, and third place (and everyone else) got under 50.

I was the only one positioned to look directly at Table Four. One woman at Table Four kept making the two-fingered "I am watching you" gesture at me, which tickled me.

I was responsible for one dead wrong answer. The question was "The Missouri Department of Conservation logo has three images including a leaf and a fish. What is the third image?" I was sure it was a river.

No.

I know. A raccoon. So cruel to miss on a raccoon.

Staycation Movies

Well, evidently this is going to be a Moviecation: a subset of a staycation in which you go out to see several movies in one week.

We haven't been to the movies for a few weeks, ever since we saw A Star Is Born and we both hated, hated, hated it. (I loved the Judy Garland version. The latest one takes that version's flaws - Born in a Trunk - and multiplies them, while it erases any early charm in the male lead. Even drunk James Mason dancing was charming.)

Well, in two days we have seen two movies: the new Fantastic Beasts movie and the new Girl-In-the-Fill-In-The-Blank movie. Obviously, Gary picked these, because he leans toward fantasy and I prefer reality. But, the last movie I picked was A Star Is Born, and now I am not to be trusted.

The Fantastic Beasts movie at least tried to stick to the rules of the alternative reality I agreed to when I bought the ticket. The Girl in the Blah Blah movie just didn't play fair at all. Bad guys waiting their turn to attack, technological devices that appear when it's convenient, advanced computer code that can be easily hacked by bad guys. I gave up on it when a particular Apple product conveniently materialized, and after that I just took a nap in the heated seats.

I need reality in a movie, not escapism.

So, that's why it's remarkable that I started crying the minute the Mary Poppins trailer came on. Why does Mary, fantasy flying nanny, get a pass?

Elderly Decor

When I imagine an elderly person's house, it is always cluttered. I see how that happens.

Your Forties: An end table is no longer functional because you have rearranged the furniture. Still, you keep it in the living room because it never hurts to have an extra table. Besides, it matches.

Your Fifties: You grow tired of going to the kitchen junk drawer to get the Chapstick. You take a nice wooden box and put a stick of Chapstick in it and put it on that table.

Your Sixties: You pull the table next to your chair so the Chapstick is always available. You stop putting the Chapstick in the box because the box is full of your nail clippers and magnifiers and you need the Chapstick every damn hour in the winter.

Your Seventies: Every surface in your house is covered with so much stuff that you get a Dave and Buster's level of sensory overload just sitting in your living room.

Your Eighties: You stop dusting because you can not see any part of the surface of the original end table.

I am in my fifties, and Gary is in his sixties. (There is Chapstick and Werther's candy in the box.)  

I am fighting the good fight against clutter. There are now four things on the mantel instead of seven. Just this week a bench was banished to the basement purgatory (basegatory? purgament?), and it is soon to be followed by the movie projection screen if Gary can't figure out a way to hook up the old technology to the new iPads.

I can't make myself go as far as friend Anne, who puts her heavy KitchenAid mixer away in a closet when she isn't using it. She is younger than I am, though.

Keeping up with the Neighbors

Remember how I was proud of our stone wall that was made from actual stone?

Seriously, look what the neighbors two doors over have done.

"We see your stones, and we raise you BOULDERS."

I am ... crushed.

 

Grapes

Last year, after watching a cute video of a baby raccoon eating grapes, I took some loose grapes and strew them on top of the Big Pile O' Decaying Nuts and Dog Food where the raccoons eat.

No interest. None.

This year, Gary saw the same video and noticed the grapes were still on the stem.

Evidently, that was the trick.

Now we're going to have to figure out how to attach those apples to the tree.

 

Podcasts

Well, it would seem having the perfect music to exercise by wears thin after one week. Instead, I've been exercising on the indoor bike while listening to podcasts.

I haven't heard any podcasts other than Serial, which I loved. I binged Serial over a weekend.

I compiled a list of all the best podcasts. I thought they would all be like Serial, and I was wrong. It seems they generally consist of mildly amusing people being more amused by themselves than merited (which in a surprising moment of clarity I realize describes me).

Anyway, I looked for podcasts similar to Serial, which led me to S-Town, which struck me as being too revealing about the intimate details of one person's life. (There's a theme here, isn't there.)

My next try was to stick with NPR. When I was on Twitter I followed the woman from Pop Culture Happy Hour, and I wondered why my station didn't carry PCHH, and I suppose they didn't because it's a podcast. It's a podcast that sent me to the game "You Are Jeff Bezos," and I will always treasure that, but I think I want something short and narrative.

Sounds like it's old episodes on This American Life for me.

Stuff vs Vacations

I know that I tell myself that the memory of a vacation lasts longer than any material thing you would have spent that money on. I know my memories of Paris will endure longer than a remodeled kitchen will be in style.

However, I must say I don't think of Paris multiple times a day, yet that's how often I do flush our new Toto toilet. (And let me tell you, if you need a toilet, go Toto. Oh, my god. I just have to hop down off it, give it a stern glance over my shoulder, and it flushes violently enough to suck all the air from the room. That's an exaggeration. But damn, it's a good toilet.)

Of course, I keep seeing posts from friends who are off on vacation and I am consumed by envy. I don't know if I can make it till early 2020, when Disney World opens up its Star Wars area. I just went with friends to visit Missouri wine country a few months ago. I think Gary and I might need to spend the day down there.

Of course, that's halfway to Memphis.

i admit I did sign up for one of the Orient Express Omaze contests. God help anyone who has to share a bathroom with Gary and me.

Ah, the travel itch. It doesn't go away. I need to go flush my toilet a few times.

In Which I Catch Up with Science

The nice thing about science is that it always changes, so there’s always something new to learn.

Health Sciences

I found out that my MS drug will not be going generic next year. (This is actually excellent news for me, because when it goes generic I get no special treatment for having been in the trial.)

”They got an extension,” the neurologist’s assistant said, “to see if it helps in pediatric MS.”

Kids have MS? Since when? Well, I guess since they’ve run kids through MRIs. They’ve diagnosed MS in kids as young as two now.

Grim.

Food Sciences

I suppose having Big Momma Monsanto in town puts Missouri ahead of the curve in food sciences. You know how Cheese = Cheese, but Cheez = Not Technically Cheese? Well, in Missouri we might start eating Meet, because lab-grown burgers can’t be labeled as Meat. But how awesome is it that they can grow meat in a lab? Is it .... cloned meat? That’s is so cool. Will they deliberately clone only the happy cows? Can vegans eat test-tube meat? Will they just swab a happy cow's gums and grow a burger from that?

So, if they can grow cow flesh, why can’t they grow people flesh? Then you’re just steps away from transplanting an unwanted fetus to an artificial uterus. (That you can then put on a hamburger bun and eat.)

And most important, when and where can I get some?

Again With the Curse of Oak Island

My TV nemesis returns later this month with The Curse of Oak Island.

(Narrator voice) Will Ellen continue watching this pointless show? Will she watch it live and waste an hour each week? Will she tape it and then fast forward through it to save time like a sensible person? Will she realize she is being hoodwinked after last year's classification of a garnet ring as "treasure" and just give up?

There’s no buried treasure. They’re digging up an old sinkhole. Everything can be explained by sinkholes and lies. Well, except for the coconut fiber, but perhaps coconuts floated up there after an epic hurricane.

Yet still I can't stop watching this show. 

How Would You Even Do That

I sat in a group of four people. One was twisting and writhing and complaining he couldn't "crack" his back.

"I've never done that," I said. "Never cracked my back. Never cracked my knuckles."

I was expecting - I don't know. Acclaim? Envy? What I got was a horrified pause, and then "What ... what did you say?"

"I've never cracked my back or my knuckles."

"OH! I thought you said NIPPLES." 

Now, this guy is in his 20s, and I could have just written it off as juvenile behavior, especially when his equally young friend agreed, "Yeah, that's what I heard too." 

Then a woman my age said, "Oh. I did think that was unusual."

And then Friend #3 piled on and said, "I definitely heard you say you'd never cracked your nipples. Four of us heard it."

"Well, you are all wrong. Why would I say something like that ... well, okay, obviously, you know me, clearly I'd say something like that, but I DIDN'T."

Then I spent the rest of the day eNUNciating and Ar-TIC-u-lating.

 

 

Perhaps After This I Will Find I Like Golf

i am feeling a bit of guilt. My job allows us to win tickets, and as you know I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve won tickets to several concerts, a magic act, a musical, some baseball games, and so on. 

Honestly, I only signed up for the drawing for the PGA Tournament because it would afford me access again to the Bellerive Country Club. I’ve only been there once and, even though I remember being a little put off  (there were five foot chandeliers every six feet, excessive), I do like rubbing shoulders with wealthy people and seeing how long before they find me out.

That’s why the day I found out I had won tickets to Monday’s practice round, I began shopping. Well, I began researching, then I began shopping. I am sure if I had ever seen a golf tournament even on television I would be better prepared for what is expected of my attire.

Thursday, while I was shopping for a coordinating top (I was wearing the pants I’d found the night before), I encountered a older lady who had been to a golf tournament, back in the day, and she said the pants I was wearing would pass, but my shoes would probably not be acceptable. I went home and polished my filthy shoes. 

This is what I plan to wear. (Because that’s what it is all about for me. I only know two golfer’s names, Rory and Tiger, and I am afraid Tiger is the only one I could identify by sight.) 

I can’t decide between the black tee and the patterned blouse. I feel the tee looks more sophisticated, but there have been conflicting messages about what is business casual from the country club and the company. I do have a tiny black bag and I could pack one as a backup. 

It is all pointless, of course, because it will be 97 degrees and I will be a sweaty pig parading in rumpled J. Jill linen pants. I doubt I will get past the door. 
 

Presidential Lies Through History

I was eleven. I was watching a documentary about the Cuban Missle Crisis with my father. That sounds impressive for a tween, but it was 1973 and there was only one television. Since I was almost as quiet as Dad, I was allowed to stay in the room. 

The program was relating how Kennedy cut a press trip short with the excuse that he had a bad cold. 

Dad turned to me and said  - and I clearly remember, it was a Friday, because Dad didn’t speak to me unless it was Friday and he had been drinking, which he only did on Fridays - Dad turned to me and said solemnly, “And that lie was the FIRST time a president EVER lied to the American people.”

i was amazed. Amazed. First, amazed that Dad knew so much about American history, and specifically about Presidential lying. Also, I was amazed that presidents didn’t lie, but he had specified that it was a Lie to the People, so maybe there were other lies, but maybe presidents had vowed to be straight up with the People?

I remembered that for years. Enough years, thankfully, that I grew up and:

1. Understood sarcasm and
2. Could put his comment in historical context, given that it was mid-Watergate era.

I wonder what on earth he would think of the current president, who - who just - I can’t even use the term “lies all the time” because, honestly, for something to be a lie you have to have some idea of what the truth is. 

Spunky Demands a Portrait

I was down in the basement, wondering what I should paint next. If you are oil painting and you want to paint every day, you have to have three things to work on, because every day's work takes three days to dry.

"Hey you!" said Spunky Labia, International Toe Porn Superstar.

I had been painting a croquet ball and I was very pleased with it. It had looked quite fresh, and then I started painting the cookie tin it was sitting in, and it all went sideways. Spheres I can do, but cylinders are beyond me. Plus I'd picked the wrong color and --

"Hey!" barked Spunky.

I kept painting. "What do you need, Spunky?"

She cried out, "I am a Great Beauty. How is it you are not painting my portrait in oils?"

I shifted my attention away from the cookie tin. "Fine," I said, "as long as you don't expect an exact representation."

So Spunky sat for a portrait, and I also worked from a reference photo. She didn't talk and was very patient. After a week and a half, I was ready to show her what I'd done.

"Oh my god! Is that how you see me? My big toe. It's so ... Fat."

She was right. I narrowed her big toe.

"Now my little toes look so ...one dimensional. Make them curvier."

I added some yellow and white highlights.Then I gave her kind of a halo. 

"That's good," she said, "Post that on Facebook."

Foolishly, I did, and I found there is nothing better than posting on Facebook to make you aware of what is deeply wrong with your painting. Mainly, the slope of the toes was utterly unnatural.

So then I had to rehab her two left toes, which left me with this, which will have to do:

 

Then she said she looked jaundiced. So I gave her a more flattering background ala Madame X.

Spunky is satisfied with that.

Gary recommends I put a water droplet on her big toe.

I have to turn it toward the wall or I’ll start adding a reflected blue to her feet.

 

Where I've Been Part the Third: In the Basement with the Paint

So, one of the first things I did was look for a walkthrough. The king of walkthroughs is of course Bob Ross, and while I dutifully made some Happy Little Trees, I didn’t like the result.

However, this walkthrough was more my style. You don’t have to wait for the paint to dry and can knock it out in an hour, and the result is an excited teacup.

Here’s how that ended up:

There's something wonky with the bottom of the teacup, but I don't care. It was one of the first three things I did and it was encouraging. I highly recommend that walkthrough.

Of course, that was followed by the Pier Horror. I had a very realistic photo of a pier and I tried to copy it. The pier was okay, the water was impressive, the hills were acceptable. I invested a lot of time in it, but when I tried to work on the sky ... a few hours later it was in the trash. There were also some daisies I finished and then trashed. I'm averaging 60% acceptable and 40% trash.

The pier should have taught me that a lovely photo will make a frustrating painting, but I still held on to that dream. I had a nice photo of a peony. It came out okay, though only after a lot of overpainting and extra work. But, it did give me a chance to practice water droplets, which you too can learn to paint if you follow this handy step-by-step process.

I like bits of that one. I really like the bottom left petal with the droplet right where the highlight is.

The problem is finding things to paint. I have some croquet balls I like to use in arrangements, because they're colorful, and easy to draw (duh, circle).

Of course, just like with the guitar, it's always about trying something harder, so now it's time to move on to the human form. 

Where I've Been Part the Second: With the Guitar

The thing I like about playing the guitar is how muscle memory will kick in and your hands can play a tune without any help from your brain. There are now about 10 tunes my hands can play on their own.

Well, this year I decided to challenge myself. I wanted to play the tune plus the accompanying chords. But, when I added in the chords on top of the notes, my hands got all confused. Nothing felt natural. I felt like I lost years of progress. And I'm talking about easy stuff. This Land Is Your Land. Blowin in the Wind. A version of Danny Boy that is so slow you forget you are playing Danny Boy.

However, two weeks ago my hands had a breakthrough and played a C chord entirely on their own, and of course I felt that same sense of surprise. Surprise, mixed with a little horror, because you just felt your hands operate independent of your brain.

Like they suddenly became sentient. It makes me shudder when they do it.

Lke they're going to start doing crazy stuff entirely on their own. No, really, it feels like that.

I figure if I keep them happy playing the guitar an hour every other day then they won't try to choke me in my sleep.

 

Where I've Been Part the First: In the Bathroom

Okay, there's just no time for the blog when the creativity has been spewing forth from every other outlet: specifically the painting outlet, the guitar outlet, and the bathroom ... outlet.

Ah, the spewing that's been going on in the bathroom. It all started with the anatomical prints we got in NOLA.  They had to be hung, and I am short on wall space. Gary first suggested we rearrange everything, and then that we have two medical bathrooms, and eventually I suggested that if he ever takes a bath I will personally take down the prints I finally had to put above the tub.

Seriously, it is jam-packed.

Above: new french L'Anatomie print, blue-green Anatomy print, Hal the skeleton, the head (another find from New Orleans), Friend 2's ultrasound, mirrors, various colonoscopies. And of course, below, the 3D anatomy chart, the China Vagina, and my MRI.

So a few things had to be removed and rearranged, and eventually the transparent pages from the old medical book had to turn in to this:

That's actually two of those floating magnetic picture frames that I drilled some extra magnets into. I didn't explain it too well to Gary. Tonight he emerged from the bathroom, horrifed, holding one of the transparent pages. He was confused because he didn't realize it came apart. He said, "I thought this was encased IN the acrylic."

Yes. Because I can pour acrylic in the basement. DO you pour acrylic? Do you extrude it?

(pause)

Now I want an acrylic shop in the basement where I can encase things in acrylic.

 

 

Round Roast Cage Match

I was so pleased with how the bottom round roast turned out in the sous vide that I thought I'd do a round roast taste test.  Top round, bottom round, and eye of round.

Three roasts enter! One roast leaves!

I carved them up into one pound chunks, bagged them, and then my 1990's Foodsaver vacuum sealer decided that it was too old to keep up with all these sous vide hijinks, thought longingly of the days it was only used to close potato chip bags, and announced it would henceforth only seal and not vacuum. Given that we've referred to it as "The Suck and Seal" for decades (sorry, Foodsaver brand), now that it didn't suck I had to heartlessly dump it into the trash and buy a new one.

Eventually, all three roasts were sealed up and went in at 132 degrees for 36 hours.

That left me plenty of time to wonder why there are top round roasts, bottom round roasts, but no middle round roasts.

Come to find out the top round is the inner thigh (sexy!), bottom round is the outer thigh, and the eye is the very outer part of the outer thigh.  (If you can stomach the sight of a dead cow being turned into supermarket meat, this video is very thorough and interesting.)

After a day and a half I fished out all the roasts, and sliced them thinly, and did the taste test. I have decided I still like the bottom round the best. Eye of round was pallid and dry (evidently that cow didn't have cellulite on her outer thighs) and the top round ranked in between the two.

Gary loved them all. Loved them. Even the eye of round. He refused to pick a favorite. My fear now is that he will snack on it from the fridge and will get food poisoning.