Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Who Am I to Criticize

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

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

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

Foot Update

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

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

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

Rewriting the Novel: Slow but Steady

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

The words were still slow.

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

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

*Does research*

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

Rewriting the Novel: a Step Back and a Step Forward

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

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

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

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

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

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

Campsite

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ding!

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

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

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

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

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

Love Rival

Well, my love affair with Honey, the pit bull mix next door, is over. I have a rival, because the couple next door has acquired a black lab pit bull mix puppy to keep Honey company. 

I came to the fence to give Honey a belly rub, and she was polite, but it was clear she would rather be playing stick with the new girl, the puppy. She hopped up after less than a minute. In the old days, last week, she would only get bored after ten minutes of two-handed dual back and belly rubs. 

I am surprisingly sad about this.

Wounded Bird

I have a tight relationship with the pit bull mix next door. She hears my garage door come up, knows I am outside gardening, runs for her owner and allegedly whines until he lets her out. He refers to it as a stalker relationship but I don’t mind. I stick my arm through an irregular gap in the fence, she positions herself on the other side, I rub her belly. Good all around.

The owner said that the dog has taken to mauling birds. I know, harming small animals, add to that the stalker tendencies and the pit bull reputation and we have a serial killer dog next door. (She doesn’t say much; kind of keeps to herself.) The owner accused the dog of maiming small birds she sees pecking in their lawn.

In fact, later that day our belly rub was terminated when the dog heard a bird chirping and stood beneath the tree, daring the nesting bird to come peck at her lawn.

I went on with my gardening, and in the process flushed out a small bird hiding in my back bed with the arbor and the bird bath (immortalized in this week’s painting). As it hopped out of its hiding space I saw its wing wasn’t working. It hopped up on the the arbor. 

I set out some water and decades-old sesame seeds from the spice rack. Baby bird ignored it. It devoted all its energy to cheeping “ARE YOU MY MOM” at each bird that came to the birdbath. I abandoned my gardening, pulled up a chair and spent the next few hours watching the Baby Bird Show. 

After fifteen minutes in, Baby Bird began hopping wildly and opening its maw and Momma bird  swooped on with half a worm, jammed it down her baby’s craw, and flew off in what I interpreted as disgust. Then, every half hour Momma Bird would return with an insect or a worm. 

I began to think of how Baby Bird would adjust to its new life on the ground. Momma showed up with three worms at once and jammed them all into Baby Bird’s gullet. “Oh, this is hospice,” I thought. Baby Bird sat there dazed with a worm tail hanging out of its beak. 

Gary came home and said, “Don’t get attached to this bird.” (I mean, it’s not like a raccoon.) I began referring to Baby Bird as Fox Snack, because I didn’t see much of a future there on the ground with the fox and the raccoons and the pit bull. 

Sadly we had a horrific storm that night and Gary did not see the baby bird or the Tupperware when he inspected the back yard for damages. No more baby bird.

Deductible Nonsense

I noticed when I got my mammogram that I owed $200 because my deductible has not been met. I believed that when I ordered my medication the second time this year they would be fine with the copay assistance paying the deductible, given that the copay assistance lady was on the phone with me, and no one said boo. But evidently not, and then a few days after the mammogram I got this letter. (Click to read the annoying AF letter in a larger size.)

On the one hand, nice of them to tailor the letter to my illness, but if your going to do that, go all the way. In what world does an MS medication have a copay of $500 a month? I think mine is $1000. 

And frankly, the rules the insurance uses for the expensive meds should be the same as the rules use use for the cheap stuff. Otherwise, what’s to keep them from saying “this heart surgery is too expensive and we won’t allow you to take this money from a GoFundMe campaign and apply it toward your deductible?”

The deductible reasoning makes no sense. I see they want me to feel my share of pain … but then do what? Opt for the cheap meds? Every MS med is over a thousand a month.

Oh well. I’ve known this was coming for years, and I’ve saved the maximum in my Health Savings Account, so that will pay my deductibles for a while. And it’s true, if other people have to pay a deductible then I should too. But if we are all the same, then my meds should follow the same rules as cheap meds.

Seems like this is going to come to a head somehow, someday. When I hit 65 I can pick any Medicare supplemental insurance I please. I will remember this nonsense.

Wait - that reminds me. I’m already been contacted to be in a class-action lawsuit against my insurance company. Evidently they did some other sketchy anti-trust stuff. I was just thinking how hard it would be to find my old group ID number, but you know, I think I’ll go through my files right now and sign up.

Rewriting the Novel: Back on the Horse

Well, I’ve gotten the heroine in trouble and I’m very vague in how to get her out, so that’s what I worked on this week. No actual sentences, just brainstorming how she survives on her own after her husband flakes on her. 

I’m not even punctuating / just putting slashes between thoughts / the woman has no skills / go back and give her skills / cheating / is sewing a skill? / too curtains 

(“Too curtains” is “too much like Scarlett O’Hara sewing her way out of her Tara Tax crisis.”)

The most recent brainstorming had her sleeping on the train until I researched 1930’s train fares and realized that would be too expensive.  If I have her sew for money how would that work? She could borrow a needle, but where would she get the thread? Could she dismantle the warp and woof of some fabric to get thread?

It amazes me how this is still hard even though I control everything in this universe. I keep going down Coincidence Road (she finds a needle in the gutter!) and then I write “/cheating/”.

I was discussing this with Friend Anne, and she immediately suggested a perfect resolution, perfect from a metaphor point of view and perfect in its realism. Not only that, it’s one of my favorite things to do: debugging. So now the Heroine can fix broken things. There’s already a radio in the plot, so now I have to research how hard it is to fix a radio, and maybe a treadle sewing machine, or any other 1930s technology.

Drone?

I looked out on the night sky Thursday evening. 

“My god, Venus is huge,” I said. I went to get the binoculars.

I thought it might be a helicopter, because it was seemed to be hovering in one place. 

By the time I got back with the binoculars it was much larger, moving west to east, and seemed to be headed for me. 

I lifted the binoculars but I had trouble finding it in the sky because now it was moving too fast. I realized I could just look up and see it - and just then it was obscured by a branch of the tree by our driveway.

I just waited a second and then it was right over my head. It seemed to be a silver accordion trivet, the size of a twin bed, and the silver was like a chrome rainbow. There was also a flashing red light, so unless the aliens comply with FAA regulations it was not an alien spacecraft. Also, it made a low hum.

It was like this, but probably simpler, and more rainbow pastel.

Not a typical drone shape at all.

Math

I once heard someone describe himself as “house-poor“ in that he had money, then he bought a house, and then saw the amount of money he was spending on the house.

We are now “car-poor.” (I am not saying I am actually poor, I am aware I am not.) There are the taxes, the fees for the license, the alternative fuel decal, the un-installed home charger, and soon: the upgrading of the electric wire coming into the house, the circuit box downstairs, and then installing the home charger.

Still, all this means is that I have been doing math, calculating what comes in and what goes out  and if we need to wait on installing the charger. Because I’m happy to wait: I’m not going anywhere. Four hours of charge time vs two days charge time, no difference.

Regrettably, even with the aid of spreadsheets and the Alexa, I find that I get a different number every damn time.

I eventually discovered what I was doing wrong: I was too lazy to type or say exact numbers, so I was rounding up but sometimes down. And while skipping the dollars and cents is fine as a rule, skipping the dollars and cents and then multiplying by the nine months left before the savings will be tapped in December really throws things off by about a thousand.

On the other hand, this more exact pass got a more satisfactory number and then I stopped. If I do more math I might be in debt again. 

Almost Done With Intro to Modern Cars 101

A few weeks ago I read through the Mini manual and made a list of thirty things I felt I needed to practice hands-on. 

I then reconsidered three things and deleted them from the list:

• pressing the concierge button and asking a question of a living human (nope)
• testing the alarm system with no guarantee the red button on the key fob will turn it off (nope)
• Watching a video on the dashboard display, requiring that I “jailbreak” my iPhone, and I will not do anything with “Break” and “Phone” in the same sentence (nope)

I got busy and now I have only a few things left to practice:

• Parallel park with the self-parking assist
• Use the cruise control (never used cruise control in Gary’s car)
• Turn the lights on manually just in case the dark sensor stops working.

I feel pretty comfortable with the car now. Still get giggly when I accelerate in sport mode. I can still remember when I had to manually roll the windows up and down in my first … well first and second and third cars. All this tech is dizzying.

Moloch

I am always delighted when I learn something new. 

I am even more delighted when I learn something old — that is, something I should have learned a long time ago.

I mean, I certainly can see why my church just thumbed right past the sacrificial-baby-burning idol Molech in Leviticus and Kings.

But, here’s the thing, baby-sacrifice just doesn’t seem effective to me. I mean, in The Road, the people are hungry enough that they roast a baby, but that makes sense. Just doing the math here: eight pounds of baby would serve 11 people, Alexa says, so I guess if a hungry man had 10 hungry wives and got one of them pregnant every 28 days, then he could pretty much guarantee enough roast baby to have at least one satisfying baby meal a month for the whole harem.

But evidently the ancients wasted babies to Molech so often that they put one of those “do not drink floor cleaner” types of warnings in Leviticus. 

I just had no idea there was baby-roasting in the Bible. I did read the whole thing in junior high school  (even the begats): you would think I would have noticed. 

So if evangelicals are paying attention to Leviticus and Kings, it does kind of explain how 23% of the GOP supposedly believes that the current government eats babies.

Raw babies, though? Because that would be gross.

Alexa Is Listening

My duties at work involve updating the anti-money laundering course. It’s difficult, because to update a course one must understand the topic of the course, and while I watched the first two seasons of Ozark, I don’t quite understand money laundering.

When I ask questions, the experts cheerfully tell me they aren’t in the business of teaching people exactly how to launder money, but how to prevent it.

Well, I’ve been working on this course, and I was making a graphic about the process: not an exact representation of the process, but a general flowchart, and something clicked and I understand how it all works in detail, even the puzzling last stage. 

“Ohhhhh,” I sad, as you do when something clicks, “Now I see.”

”See what?” Gary asked.

”Money laundering. I get it. I could launder up some money right now.”

”Boop” the Alexa said,  as if she had been waiting for three years to catch me in a confession. 

It was pretty scary. I tried to take it all back but I could not.

Old

A week ago I was telling the young neighbor about my 35 bruises. 

She said, “Oh really? Is that what happens to old people?”

I thought, “Really, girl?” Then I softened. I’m not old, but I am elderly-adjacent. Gary’s old. Well, he isn’t exactly old, but he looks old.

I stuck with that interpretation of reality for a week, until Gary needed an eyepatch for some eye nuisance that popped up, and then I realized that we are not only old enough to need an eyepatch but that we already HAVE an eyepatch, therefore, we are old.

 

Trunk

I think I’ve taken the Mini out seven times in the last month, and twice it has given me a warning message that my trunk is open. 

Bear in mind that I am sixteen years behind the rest of you in car technology, and most of you know why my trunk is mysteriously open. As I say, I am way behind, so I had to call the Mini dealer to find out what was going on.

Here is the key fob:

Top button is Unlock, the one with the logo is Lock, the one right below that is Open Your Damn Trunk Without Realizing It, and I’m afraid of whatever the bottom red button does. 

The man I spoke with was gracious enough to blame other elements in my purse for pushing the  trunk button, but I know my fat little fingers or my too-tight jeans pocket did it.

Things I Have Discovered While Curating My Music

I’ve been adding my early music collection to Amazon Music. Man, there are a lot of nineties songs, which is odd given that I made the list in the mid-2000s. I still have the late aughts and 2010s to go. There were a few surprises.

• There ia a Barenaked Ladies song I didn’t know about. I mean, I know there are some that I am saving for when I am old and in the home, along with the pot, but I had no idea that 20/20 Hindsight was out there.
• I have three different songs all called Bang Bang: Cher, Liz Phair, Jessie J.
• I found almost everything on Amazon Music, with the exception of two Nellie McKay songs, Cowboy Moth’s Voodoo Shoppe album, and the BNL drummers side project: Don’t Talk, Dance.
• Someone at Amazon Music does not know how to alphabetize.

 

CD Dismay

Yes, yes, the rest of you converted all your CDs to digital ten years ago. There’s no CD player in the new car, I am late to the game. They are finally forcing me into the future.

It’s a big adjustment, trading physical stuff for digital stuff. I was going to burn every CD we own to iTunes and then somehow get them to Apple Music or Amazon.

I was steeling myself to pitch it all at the end and Gary reminded we that we can play CDs on our blu-ray still. 

I was indignant we would have to re-purchase everything digitally, but looks like I’ll be piggybacking on the Amazon Prime and then using iTunes to get rarities on a Flash drive for the car’s USB hub.

It doesn’t look like a lot, does it? But it’s years of choices. I feel like a hoarder being asked to clean out her house. The thousands of decisions. The emotions. 

Have you done this? Was it this hard for you? 

Uh - oh

This thought just crept into my head:

”You know, I bet pottery’s an interesting hobby.”

That’s some trouble brewing.

Herd Immunity

I heard on the news last night that scientist say the U.S. might not ever reach herd immunity. (It’s what I herd. Snort.)

This discourages me. I suppose it means I’ll always have a 25% chance of dying from the covid if I leave my bubble and encounter a virus. 

(By the way, if I were you I would have just thought, “Didn’t she just go out in public and buy a car?” Yes I did, and my mask can only do so much. Judge away.)

Perhaps the globe will start behaving as if they have a stake in the global pandemic and begin sanctioning the U.S. — no more Japanese televisions or South American oil until we flatten all our curves.

Then I wondered how many of the people resisting the covid vaccine are also resisting the flu shot, and if perhaps the flu shot could just combat Flu Type A, B, and now a little C for Covid.

Actually, I don’t remember it, but after the swine flu non-global pandemic it seems they started tossing in a little swine flu vaccine in there for H1N1.

That’s just what we need. Keep it on the down-low and next fall all those patriots who feel a covid shot limits their liberties might get some extra MRNA with their flu vaccine. 

Then again, do patriots get flu shots? Only 40-50% of us even get the flu vaccine. 

I don’t know. I’m grasping at straws.

New Technology

This happens to us every 16 years or so: we go from the old generation of a vehicle to the new one and experience the wonder of what’s happened to vehicles recently.

I wanted to turn on the lights because it was overcast, and I couldn’t, but then when I got home the lights were on because, I guess, it knew it was overcast. Gary said the new cars know when it’s overcast, and they car puts on the lights for you. I tested that this morning when it was overcast - in fact it was raining, and the car turned in the lights while it was in the garage, and then the car turned on the wipers when I backed out into the rain.

I said, that’s too much magic for me today, and pulled back in. I’ve decided I can accept one weird thing each day. Yesterday it was the realization that if you leave it alone in the garage for a few minutes it entertains itself by throwing a illumination advertising on the garage floor.

That was yesterday’s magic. And, honestly, that was a little scary too. “It knows its name! It’s sentient!”

Speaking of scary, I was initially interested in the fancy wheel covers that resemble a UK electric outlet. I had no idea they were initially called the “Corona” model.

Imagine being reminded of the virus every day for the next 16 years.

 

Mute

I was really late to a Zoom meeting with, oh, 100 people. You’d think no one would notice, especially my department leader. 

Nope. He noticed because he’d been waiting half an hour for me to join so he could ask me questions on the chat about the status of another project I’m on. The chat said, “Can you give me a percentage complete?”

I typed, “Of the 8,000 courses I have received I have completed about 400.”

He immediately typed back, “So, 5% completed. Thanks for the update!”

That number sounded odd to me, so I asked Alexa. “Alexa, what is five percent of eight thousand?”

Alexa confirmed my department leader’s math was correct.

My department leader typed,  “You’re not on mute” in to the chat.

SO humiliating. A trifecta of humiliation. Doubling down on the shame of being late, now the Department Leader knows I don’t trust his math, that I’m so bad at math I have to ask Alexa, plus the person running the meeting knows I’m not listening at all. 

Not a good meeting.

I Might Leave the House

Today, we might go test an electric Mini Cooper. Or - Gary might test a Mini Cooper; I don’t relish the thought of being in a Mini with a salesperson who probably snacks on raw bats. No social distancing in a car that is itself barely six feet long.

The dealership promises they are clean, and masks are required. They don’t know this, but we’ll be meeting outside. 

Gary thinks we’ll like one of the two the dealer has in stock and come home with it. I’d rather wait six months for one that’s exactly right. 

Gary usually gets his way in these things.

I Continue to Shrink

Gary noticed it last week. “What shoes are you wearing? You’re short now.”

Confirmed at the doctor’s office: I’m down another half inch. After years of 5 foot 8, I went to 5 7 a few years ago and now I’m 5 feet 6.5 inches.

I also have a bone density test coming up now. I can’t imagine how I could have weak bones: I’ve never broken one, my favorite drink as a child was milk, my labs have me over the top of the recommended range for vitamin D, and I am right in the middle for calcium. 

What I can’t get over is that I am now literally less of myself. Very disheartening.

Rewriting the Novel: Halfway Begun

Well, I looked at my outline and I’ve hit the midpoint, and I counted the words, and I’m at 30,000. Thirty thousand very very poor words, but exactly half of what’s expected. 

It’s almost all dialogue that could be pared down to make room for pithy descriptions. 

I think I’ll be hard-pressed later  to find the right number of words for the second half, given that in parts the outline truly says “Something happens here.” Maybe this is where that inspiration thing kicks in.

This Is Why We Don’t Use ‘One’

I visited the Wikipedia pronouns page because we’ve hired some Southerners  which stemmed a work discussion about “you all” filling in as the second person pronoun, with “all y’all” meaning a specific number of “you all”.

Pronouns are just a mess. We’ve given up the fight on “his or hers” and went with “theirs” (or rewrite).

Seriously, One The Pronoun? I’ve always explained that you don’t punctuate the passive pronoun it as “it’s” because you wouldn’t write, “The man trained the dog to put it’s paw in hi’s hand.” And now you give me one’s as the possessive pronoun.

And on top of that it isn’t Oneself? Or Onesself? It’s onself? Really?

Of course, I’m using Wikipedia as a reliable source. That’s my problem. Of course, I have too many books to find my Chicago Manual of Style.

Basement

Well, even after we got the drainage fixed, the puddle in the basement welled up on the New Year’s Day ice storm, but it was an ice storm, and there’s expansion and blockages that go with it, so I let it slide.I just cursed a lot.

The ice storm cursing was nothing compared to the cursing last week. I read in the paper that parts of the St. Louis metro area were flooding because there was so much rain and no place for the water to go. Our puddle hadn’t show up for three months, so I decided to go down to my dry basement and feel smug. 

Puddle. Epic cross-basement puddle. Usual corner puddle combined with stair landing leak trickling all the way to the drain.

Before the drainage work, we’d have a puddle every time it rained. Now it has to be a newsworthy event to prompt a puddle. I need to remember that that’s still an improvement, and no one in this neighborhood of rabbit warrens and river clay has a totally dry basement.

The smartest thing I could do is rearrange the basement so my art area is no longer on the border of the puddle so I don’t even look at it (on the now rare occasions it makes an appearance). But that would require more electrical outlets in the basement, and the moving of light sources. I did suggest we put Gary’s drum kit in the wet corner, just to see his reaction, which was very satisfying.

So, a puddle every season is better than a puddle every week, and at least the puddle is contained. And at least there IS a basement, given the current tornado season. Time to mop it out of my mind.

———— one day passes

Only ... that was yesterday. There’s a puddle again, and frankly, it barely rained. Time to rearrange the basement. Or to put in a new back porch. Or to meditate every time it rains.

When the Abnormal Feels Normal

I was driving with Gary, returning from the only other stop on our bubble path, when I said, “Hey, do you want to go out to dinner? We haven’t gone out to dinner in ages.”

And then I remembered, there’s a reason we haven’t gone out to dinner, there’s a global pandemic, hello.

So strange that I’ve become so used to the pandemic that I’ve forgotten there’s a pandemic.

Rewriting the Novel: the Drudgery

Okay, I just had my narrator speculate what a very petite woman might look like pregnant, and it was something about how she would be baby from her crotch to her chin and there would be a baby arm sticking out of her nose. 

This is because I am bored. I have a draft of all the exciting scenes: the fistfights and oil finds, and now I’m writing scenes about people thumbing through the Sears 1930 fall-winter catalog.  it has to stay, because she arcs away from convention and rules and the Sears winter catalog scene is key.

Still, it’s boring. Sadly, my way is to finish things when they go south and then immediately start again, instead of abandoning: the yellow and red hell-foyer, most but not all paintings (I did abandon the peonies before the bologna peonies). 

But it is tedious. 

I Have Personally Contributed to Half of the 100k Views

This video has just the right proportion of weird and funny for me. It makes me laugh every time.

 

Vacation Plans

Last year I took no vacation days until summer, and it became very inconvenient to have vacations and deadlines at the same time. 

How will I fill these days? Write, paint, play the guitar, I suppose. Or, put another way: fail, fail, and fail. I do like to fail, but intermittently. A week of it might be discouraging. 

I’ve got lots of yardwork, of course, and I need to get out an old worn suit jacket and some iron-in embroidery letters to make it read “These pants fit a year ago.” But other than that I have nothing to fill my time.

 

Unbumped Bullets!

• Wednesday evening at 5 pm I checked my email, and there was an invitation from the county to schedule a time for my vaccine! I’d been resigned that I would need to wait until next Monday.
  • I don’t know what category I was in. I had read that we immune-suppressed were being pushed to the end for our own protection, because no one knew how we’d react. So I suppose the organ donors on immunosuppressants were in the earlier phase as guinea pigs?  Who knows, who cares, who is going to argue? I picked the earliest appointment: Thursday at 2:45 pm.
• It was a long stretch between Wednesday at 5 to Thursday at 2:45. I stayed up late, too excited for sleep, doing research, deciding what to wear, and planning how I would dupe my  body so no fluids etc. would inconvenience me. Essentially, I stopped eating and drinking after breakfast, and it was supremely successful.
• Gary went to the same venue on Monday for his second shot and had a three hour wait, so I planned for that. Then - an encouraging sign - a local Facebook friend posted she’d just been through the line at the place I was headed and it was terrific. “In and out.”
• I arrived at the gate at 2:42. A man in a military uniform checked the form they’d sent me to fill out before the appointment. Six officers belonging to what I assumed was the National Guard waved me to my parking spot.
• I was expecting a line of people inside. Nope. Just empty switchbacks populated by more uniforms than civilians. There were three people in front of me who were moving very fast. I wove through that line like it was Six Flags during a tornado watch. I just handed my form to various people and never broke stride from the trot the three people in front had established. I even commented to the last officer that I couldn’t keep up. He put me in the last seat in a “lane” of seats. I turned my head and a woman with a needle was rolling up to me. Swabbed me, grabbed my fat, gave me a shot. No pinch or anything. 
• I asked her what had changed between Monday and today, because this was remarkable, and she said “I wasn’t here Monday,” which I took to mean “That was the problem with Monday.” It was 2:53, 11 minutes after I drove into the lot.
• Then I began the longest stretch, the fifteen minute wait. My vaccinator turned to the man on the other side of the aisle, jabbed him, and he clutched his arm and began screaming dramatically, clearly to get a laugh. I shared my vaccinator with the man across the aisle and that was it. One vaccinator per pair. Ten vaccinators per aisle. Unreal. 
• I looked on the other side and saw a man in camo, and another man in camo with “Air Force” stitched on a label above his pocket, and I realized I have no idea what the National Guard looks like. They could have activated the Air Force, I don’t know.
• I asked them how they had turned things around so dramatically since Monday, and he said, a little cryptically, that Mistakes were Made, and they had been ironed out. Then he said, “Steam-pressed out.” I took that to mean things might be a little too efficient.
• The timer rang and the lane to my left was free to go, and after they walked out every chair was sanitized. Then it was my lane’s time to go. I was out of there in twenty six minutes. With the venue fifteen minutes from home I was home in less than an hour. 
• I got the Pfizer vaccine, so a three week wait for the next one, and then two more weeks to be sure, and I can relax a little. Still wear a mask, though, so I don’t unknowingly breathe in a bug and breathe it out on someone unprotected. 
• I did not get a superhero bandage like Gary and some others I know, but I will let that slide. I guess the military doesn’t supply Batman band-aids. Small price to pay.
  
  

 

Gary’s Continuing Fight Against the Apnea, Part II

Ok, so when Gary finally accepts he’s got to wear a mask for the apnea, there will be another problem.

The pulmonologist the PA recommended was Dr S______, the anti-hospice pulmonologist who made Mom’s last day even worse, and I don’t know how I feel about that.

At first I gave it a hard nope. Not that guy. Then I realized the man’s big crime was he was focused on patching up Mom’s deteriorating lungs. Not his fault Mom picked him to run her hospice without researching his views first. I want a doctor who is committed to Gary’s lungs.

But then, I remember, he said he didn’t read the correspondence or file or whatever he got that says, “Congratulations, you’ve been chosen to be a hospice doctor!” Big oversight.

So, Dr. S______ is the type of doctor you want if you are committed to living. I won’t have to see him. Or we could always ask for a different referral. I have other friends on breathing devices, certainly they have doctors. I need to find that out so there’s an option I can suggest if I can’t get past the history.

AARP Old

In the current issue of AARP magazine (no, really, it’s useful), there’s an article about a woman who was unprepared when her husband died and she had to deal with the finances.

Gary and I share the money chores, so that won’t happen to us. Instead, Gary will have no idea how to maintain the garden and I will be lost with equipment that doesn’t plug directly into the wall outlet. 

Depending on who goes first, either Gary will have to take a class called “Weed Identification for Widowers” or I will just have to hire someone from Best Buy to connect the router to the laptop to the TiVo to the receiver to the splitter with the Xbox and the DVD player.

If there’s a community college course on that I’ll be glad to take it. I remember Mom enrolled in a course on stocks to maintain Dad’s portfolio, which she did, though I don’t think she made any actual trades in the twenty years she lived on after he died. 

 

I Am Obsessed

You can’t just have extra soap and not use it.

Extra soap

Pro tip: use a water-pik to clean your skulls.

Okay. Now I’m done.

Doing the Bump

Last December I was in vaccine phase 1B, but then in January I got bumped to 1C after they invented 1C.

Then in February I realized I forgot to get an organ transplant. If I took the same immune-suppressant drugs because of an organ transplant, I would move up in line. I suppose organ transplant donees start with a normal immune system that is cut in half, while my auto-immune gave me a 110% immune system. So that mine, cut in half, is still better than theirs. 

So in early March, I registered with another site that asked me if I was immunocompromised due to an organ transplant, and then asked later if I was immunocompromised for some other reason, and I thought, cool, I might bump up now. Nope, they put me in Phase 2. Another bump down. Luckily they asked if I was in the financial services field: I think that’s the only thing saving me from Phase 3.

Last night I heard that one local vaccine venue had lines stretching from one major highway to another.

Today I woke up to the news that starting on April 9, three weeks from now, everyone in Missouri is eligible for a shot, and my phase, Phase 2, starts March 29. I mean I’m happy for us all, but also sad to realize how much I wanted to social-climb my way up through our new vaccine class system.

Slow Movie

A Room With a View was released a few years after we were married. By the time we got our new VCR attached to the TV, it was too late for the tea-steeping pace of a Merchant Ivory movie, and I fell asleep before the end. 

Since then it has been thirty-six years. A baby born during the premiere would have a) made a mess in the theater and b) grown to be a post-menopausal woman who could still not stay awake during this movie.

I have tried. I try to watch it every decade or so. Usually I find it when it’s toward the start and the only thing happening is bees buzzing in a field FOR FIVE SOLID MINUTES, or so it seems. 

So, the TiVo said, “You are sleeping in regularly now, and you seem to enjoy this bustles and crumpets bullshit, so how about this,” and it recorded it as a suggestion. We have played this game before, where a movie sits in my suggestions long enough for me to say, “No, Sophie’s Choice, no, On the Basis of Sex, no, I have never watched you and it appears I am not going to watch you this time.”

This time though, I am taking a new approach. I am ingesting A Room with a View in twenty minute capsules. I get my dose of Helena Bonham Carter every few days, but only twenty minutes of her, no more. I’ve done this for a few days, and she just got kissed in a field. (It’s been so long since that movie was made that it depicts a non-consensual field kiss.)

I could be wrong, they might be lulling me in to a stupor so the drama has more impact, but I doubt there’s going to be a frantic gondola ride at the climax.

Ultimate Brains

The green brains arrived. And they were white. I contacted the seller and he sent out what I requested, pink brains (I went back to pink).

But really, shouldn’t I carve down the soap so it fits inside the skull? Then label the skull “Soap” in some nice lettering?

Next I have to find a better way to hang the metal face. It has to go next to its twin, and that’s hard.

I feel like after my death they’ll discover this bathroom and hail me as one of those obsessed folk artists who turn their homes into UFOs or airplanes. 

Food as Entertainment

I think all American office workers are in the same boat: we all gained our Covid 19 pounds because we ate and drank our feelings, and now even our business casual clothes don’t fit.

I hope one of my money managers is throwing my my retirement savings into stretchy business suit stock. 

I have dropped five pounds from my peak, and I’d just dropped down to my first set of non-extra large pants in decades the night before we got the call to shelter in place. Luckily, all my pre-pandemic clothes are still in a box in the basement, so I am covered. 

I do occasionally visit my closet, all the way on the other side of the house from my pile of pajamas and two modest Zoom shirts, and I look at my old clothes. There’s a green jacket I bought that I wore one time and I am certain it will not fit. 

And my god, the shoes. I’ve only worn my dress three-inch heels once in the last year. Will I be able to walk in heels? I might have to practice.

There’s a very depressing day ahead in all our futures, the day before we start work again when we find we have nothing to wear and we can’t walk in heels. I really think if there were ever a time for TeddyJ to allow us to come to work in trash bags and bathrobes, this is it.