Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

This Year's Christmas Ornament

Usually I have bought a Christmas ornament by this time. 

I was debating with Gary what might make a good ornament symbolizing the the year.

I don't know if they make tiny little wig ornaments, bur that didn't happen to "us."

On review, all that happened was that we sold Mom’s house. (I mean, of course Dave died. A little vial with Dave's ashes was the first thing I thought of, but that's just a little too morbid, even for me.)

So, no vial of Dave. Focusing on Mom's house.

Gary, on the other hand, is so enchanted with Dave's Apple watch that he's dedicating his ornament the Minnie Mouse watch face.  I can see the appeal. She's the only female who giggles at him.

Death Food

When I was at Dave's it was just too easy to Grubhub all the food. Sure, it was ridiculously expensive (like fifty bucks for Taco Bell), but with the terminal agitation and the expired food from Shipt, it was easier.  

It was also easier when I came back. I had enough stuff to do with lawyers and catching up on work that I didn't want to spend any time making butter chicken from scratch. 

After two weeks back I realized that there are frozen pre-made meals at the grocery, and that would be almost as convenient as Grubhub. It isn''t as tasty, but it's handy.

It's also pretty fattening, even though I really did make an effort to skip the ones with starch. This plus Thanksgiving and Christmas - I'm pretty sure I'll have put back all my Covid weight by the new year.

Sometime I wish I were a little bit of an alcoholic. I doubt I'd be fat if I didn't soothe with food. I could never drink all the calories in a Thanksgiving dinner. Plus, I'd have more friends. My god, the friends Dave had. They're still calling his phone to leave messages even though they know he's dead (which is disconcerting).

But I suppose a dozen-donut-hangover is better than an booze hangover. 

Rookie / Cookies

Rookie. Every synthetic wig wearer does this once: opens a hot oven and scorches the nylon that her wig is made of. I went a whole two months without doing it. Technically I could take that wig to a stylist and have her clip out the scorched hairs then use mild heat to re-route the ones that remain, but it seems to me that with supplies and practice I could acquire that skill. In the meantime I just bought the same wig again, and because the floodgates were opened I bought a different style. Just to see how it looked on me. 

I was on the fence but Gary surprised me by being very positive about Shirley. 

Cookie.

Speaking of frying ones wig, it was a dutch baby in a 425 degree oven that got Chimera 1.0.  Even 350 degrees will cook any wig, so I have slapped a cautionary post-it note over the pre-heat button in preparation for this year's Christmas cookie bake.

Bad Things: Dust and Mysteries Part 1

Per his wishes, I cremated Dave. Part of Dave will join part of Mom and part of Dad in my back garden. (To be specific, I'd say it's 2 cups of Mom, one cup of Dad. I'll make sure that Dave doesn't overwhelm them.)  

After Mom died I followed most of her directions: I amended her last name on the headstone, then I sprinkled some of her cremains on the plot, dug up some of Dad's ashes from her garden, and mixed hers and his for my garden.  So now part of Dave will join the mix.

Only part will stay with the family, because per his wishes, I divvied him into baggies for his AA friends to put in their gardens "to help things grow."

Let me tell you, while it may be practical to distribute ashes among friends, and relatives, and friends you love more than relatives, Dave's friends do not necessarily relish the responsibility of a baggie o'Dave. Maybe they think it's gross, or maybe they think he's out there expecting them to take him to Europe or something. I was surprised how taken aback they were by the suggestion. Eventually I found one sympathetic ear and gave him a dozen baggies of Dave to distribute how he saw fit. Will it happen? Who knows?

Rewriting the Novel: FFS

So I finally found the bookcase that Dave said had the family stuff "on the left."

I was looking for things like the Transfer on Death papers he claimed he filed, or the car title, that would be helpful, but what did I find instead?

Another draft of Jerry's novel. A better draft, at least judging by the first page. 

Does it have the themes of abandonment? Probably not. But seriously, come ON. 

 

Rewriting the Novel: Benchmark

I can't believe it, but before I cam to Albuquerque I knuckled down last month and finished all of the third draft. Almost all. Ten pages shy.

It's changed so much since draft one. It's only five percent shorter, and it flies. It spins out like a kite string. 

Still, I have realized I need another swing through it to make it less judgmental. And another for descriptions, now that I have room. And of course the other remaining seventeen for consistency in dialog and the like. This might actually be done before Christmas.

Good Things: Medical Marijuana

When New Mexico legalized medical marijuana, Dave really leaned in to it. The people at the local Pure Leaf know him well. So then this week he discovered that he might be in pain and not be able to drive to get his pot (or "cannabis," as everyone corrects me). He could send me to buy recreational pot (cannabis) but that is weak compared to what he is used to buying with his medical marijuana card.

However, the hospice people say that given a few weeks they can transfer his rights to me and I will have a caregiver card. Then I can sashay into the establishment and stockpile reefers and the like. This will be interesting if it comes to pass.

Good Things; No Terror on the Ground

Dave has, as you know, a pit bull and a blue heeler.  

I don't know these dogs, they don't know me. There were many scenarios in which I would have to enter the house without Dave and they would, I assume, kill me.

It turned out that didn't happen. Dave was here, so it was cool.

The blue heeler doesn't know I exist. She knows me as "The One Who Doesn't Know About Dog Food Portion Control, Read the Bag, Moron." 

The Put Bull is temperamental. She is often snuggly, but if Dave yelps out in pain she looks right at me and growls. And that makes sense, because in her mind all of this hospice nonsense started right around the time I showed up and she is suspicious.

But Dilaudid has entered the picture, so maybe there will be less yelping.

 

Good Things / Bad Things

Given two choices I try to list the pros and cons and make my decision that way. Gary decides based entirely on the cons. So anytime I make a decision Gary thinks he's helping by telling me all the negatives. So there's lot of "YOU PICKED CHOICE A? BUT WHAT ABOUT --" followed by all the negatives, and if I change my mind it's "YOU PICKED CHOICE B? BUT WHAT ABOUT --" and so on, eternally.

I cut him off this time and insisted we focus on the positives this time. You wouldn't think there were positives, but here is what we came up with.

1. This is not my first hospice. I'll have some idea of how things operate. Mom's hospice was the worst experience of my life, but I know what to expect now.
2. I had half the money from the sale of Mom's house earmarked for David anyway, so I can throw money at any problems. No place for me to sleep at Daves? Order a bed. Hire a home health aide and live in a hotel. Hire an aide anyway. (Though I know from the experience with Mom one month of 24 hour help would eat up all the earmark. But hush, that's negative.)
3. The financial advisor and I agreed to leave the earmarked house fund in an accessible account. That means I don't have to pay any fees or penalties to access it.
4. Forget the earmark funds, I am RICH in frequent flyer miles. A quarter of a million miles piled up during the pandemic from our daily Amazon purchases. I could hop on a plane and fly back to see Gary on a weekend if I had to.
5. I just got Evusheld, and as long as I can avoid any BQ viruses I'll be protected.
6. I am on a lull at work. I won't be dumping work on someone else, and I have a month and a half of sick and vacation time. After that I can go on Family and Medical Leave and chew up the earmark faster.
7. Gary had a migraine all last week that meant I had to shuttle him around two hours each day, but he says he's better.

Medical sites

You know how you'll look at a page in German and Google offers "Translate this page?" I want that for medical journal pages and doctor's notes. I've read a lot of those pages recently, because of my brother's decline. 

At some point, though, sadly, things become crystal clear. Cancerous requires no translation. Malignant ascites; I needed some help with that at first. Still, very clear. Very definitive. 

Brain Soaps Redux

I realized that a month ago I spent time crafting soap into brains and didn't document the results for future generations, all of whom will have 3-d printers built into their iPhones and will not be impressed by soap carving.

The carved soap project began with some Yardley's lavender soap I got as a gift, years ago, that always seemed meant for a higher purpose than being rubbed into my armpits.

Here is that result.

Carving soap is easy. Like all humans I know how to carve soap, but for the molded soap project I had to learn how to melt stable store-bought soap, plus how to fashion a silicone mold from an existing 3.5 inch brain soap and a butter tub. 

Here is that result.

A little lumpy, some pits, but what brain does not have a few pits and holes?

Wigs Again! Will She Ever Shut Up About The Wigs?

Today I learned: sometimes even though you spend hours conditioning and de-tangling a used wig, you will put it on and look like a man.

And then later you realize you had it on backwards and then you turn it around and look like a woman.

So, getting the hang of the wig thing. Got to put the wig on the right way.

Wig Month: the Wig of My Youth

Against all protests I am keeping this wig. There should be protests, because I do look a little like a 60s hippie. Or a country-western singer.

I also look a little bit like I did when I was young. GARY even volunteered that. True, if you cut the volume in half.

So this one is staying, but staying in the closet until it can go to a stylist and be thinned,  maybe next year. 

 

Wig Week: One More, to be Named Chimera

So, I saw a number of negative reviews for a wig that seemed perfectly acceptable, so that made me curious. And when that wig showed up at an amazing 75% off sale, I figured I should see how bad it looked on me.

At first it did look pretty bad. It seemed like a collage of three wigs: a nape, a crown, and a bang all stitched into one. But then I added a headband and the headband tied it all together.

Of course, this means I have to start looking for headbands for mature ladies. Coming soon: Headband Week.

Wig Week: Bob Surprises People

I've been wearing Servalan for a week or so. That wig is just an inch longer than my natural hair, but it is a bit dark, and besides, I like Bob the beachy-wave wig better. So on Friday Bob  debuted in a Zoom meeting with my male boss. 

Boss: (quizzically)  "... Ellen?" 

And then after that I only had one other meeting with someone unfamiliar with my new decision, and she was wise enough to say, essentially, "Do whatever makes you happy." If anyone I know questions that, I have in my possession this image of the back of my head after a shower that I can submit to the court as exhibit A.

(You can click that link, it's fine with me. I don't mind if you see it, I just don't want to look at it if I don't have to.)

So now that the seal has been broken, I decided to order two more wigs. And another off eBay that will be too big, but I might be able to cut it down.  And then I'm stopping. 

Wig Week: The Impending Reveal

Well, last week I made a zoom background. It was designed to surround my head and to make it clear that I was wearing a wig.

I tested that background during a little Zoom meeting I had by myself.

Suffice it to say they need a word for when you still have the last meeting's zoom background up when you start your next meeting, especially when the next meeting is with a room of total strangers you will, thank God, never see again. I had to explain that no, I was not currently wearing a wig.

I did not use the background on Monday, the day I first wore the pixie cut, Servalan. My first meeting was a woman who has never seen the back of my head, given that she was hired during the pandemic. Ergo, she is unaware of my hair problems, so the background would look peculiar. I had already told my direct team to expect it, and I am certain they noticed because I kept fluffing my head to make it look more unkempt. 

(I find that Servalan likes to be worn low on the brow, at least half an inch below my natural hairline. Any higher and I look like Nathan from South Park.)

It doesn't seem like I have a good day to use the Zoom announcement background until I introduce Bob to the entire department on Friday afternoon. That will be fun.

 

Wig Week: Winners

As we do in all beauty contests, let's announce the winners by first announcing the losers.

• The only human hair wig, Moe, was knocked out in the early rounds. Gary suggests I use it as a merkin.
• The ponytail may get 'highlighted," which is to say patches may get spray-painted with hair root dye. 
• The red and purple wig might be taken to a stylist, or sprayed with root dye, or saved for 60's parties. This was an eBay purchase, about 75% off, so I'm not crying over it.
• Mom's hair is my lab rat, but if I don't destroy with experiments then I might take it to a stylist and have it cut into something presentable. Then I could dress up as my mother ala Norman Bates.

Distance winner - The overly dark pixie resembles my natural hair on Zoom. That ones a keeper. I have named this wig Servalan. 

In Person Winner - One wig was reviewed by others as skimpy. Of course, in the mirror it looks like too much hair on me, but after playing with it a while the wig I have named "Bob" began to look more natural. 

(Mom in my head says, "Get your hair out of your eyes." That makes me smile.)

 

Wig Week: Reviewers

There are two kinds of people who review wigs.

Real people in comments

The sales websites post reviews from purchasers, satisfied or not.

The dissatisfied people say great things like, I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY SOLD ME THIS MOP IT LOOKS LIKE A COYOTE TAKING A NAP ON MY SKULL.

Satisfied people post reviews with photos of what the wig looks like, which is very handy, because usually you only see what the wig looks like on a model giving full-on sex face. I look for the reviews from older women with the same feature-to-face ratio I have (much face, few features).

(These satisfied reviewers also refer to their wigs as "she." "I've had her a year and she doesn't shed at all." I wonder if men do that with their toupees.)

Husbands

Husbands, I have found, do not like wigs. They prefer to compliment whatever is left of your existing hair (or "biohair," as the people say).

I have made some progress  with Gary's opinions, and I find that first showing him something far worse than the best version of the hair of my youth is helpful.

For example, I showed him a wig I like to call Samara.

He was aghast. (He also resigned himself to his inevitable death in seven days.)

Then I showed him a lighter version. Still bad, but less awful.

"Oh, that looks better. but still not as good as your real hair."

If I really need to sell him on something I need to set it up with something entirely wrong, like this number that has as many colors as the ball gown from The King and I.

I'll hang on to that until I need something else to look good in contrast.

Wig Week: Missed the Mark

Several attempts at hair missed the mark.

This hair looked cute from the side but very egg-like from the front.

I think I could have done aubergine and brown, or red and brown, but not aubergine, red, and brown.

In addition, I got a fake ponytail in what I thought was a slightly lighter shade than the color of the short style. Just as dark, as you see below.

It looked so comical I thought I would keep that hybrid wig on wig construction and surprise Gary when he came home.

He was surprised. Then he went to the bathroom and came back out wearing Mom's wig. It was too young for him.

Wig Week: Hair Hunt Update

Here's an update on highlights from the wig hunt.

• I bought a used wig, 60% off, so I could check the color and construction of an Ellen Wille wig. That brand is are supposedly the most natural and least bulky of all the wigs. Sadly, this particular model is very thick and straight and chunky, but the color is only one shade too dark and it fits.

• I'm starting to narrow down what I want. Brown, thin, curly but not too curly, synthetic. I read that the real human hair wigs can cost ten times what the synthetic ones cost, but they don't last ten times as long. 
• It became clear I'd be expected to wash and maintain this thing if I ever pick one, so I decided to conscript Mom's old wig into the role of Practice Wig. I added baby powder to see if that cut down the fake shine. I haven't tested shampoo and conditioning  yet. I did give her a few bangs.

 
She might also get some roots to get some depth. I understand one uses furniture touch-up markers for that. I feel a little bad defiling Mom's wig in that way, but she isn't using it.

• Gary is now pleading with me to avoid the wigs with lines like, "But I love your pink scalp! I want to see more of it!" He's being sweet. We have an agreement that as soon as work or other activities end I will put away the wig and let him fondle my wisps.

Not Enough Info for a Full Review: Excelsior

Last week there was an online listening party for the new Steven Page album, Excelsior. I believe it's out today.

That was a new experience for me -- getting to hear the music before it comes out.  But, with that,  you give up something else: the liner notes. I feel the best part of new music is listening to the songs while reading along. 

So, I can't give you the liner notes, but I can pull out the lines that I liked. Some songs were very musical and soaring, some catchy, but these had lines that struck me.

Feel (Death and loss and funerals) - "They can’t help but lie when somebody dies"

Human Doll (AI) - "It can emulate a realistic kiss"

How Much is Enough  (Breaking up) - "Talk yourself into leaving a little self for yourself"

The Golden Age of Doubling Down (society today) - "We're in crazy town led by circus clowns / Let’s go underground for an ultrasound"

Zoom (fucking pandemic) - "No immunity, just community"

That last line got me. Zoom made me cry with its general theme of "when is this horseshit going to be over already."

Big Slide

The pebble-dash elementary (Graham elementary, corner of Graham and 270, I need to drive by and see if it still exists) made me think of other dangerous buildings of my youth.

The most dangerous was the Catholic church we briefly attended when we first came to Saint Louis after the divorce, before they discovered the remarriage and refused Mom communion, at which point she said, fine, I'll raise them as atheists then.

It was St. Martin des Porres, and the roof looked like this:

Yes, a big green slide from the steeple to the vestibule.

Even worse, that church was mere blocks from this enormous slide.

See the tiny people on top? Those are Catholic children driven mad by going to God's Green Slide every week and never being allowed on the roof. I am astonished Protestant children weren't driven mad by the juxtaposition and that just bumped up attendance at the big slide, which lasted quite a while until a child was injured. 

I only went once and I was so scared the attendant put me on  his lap and slid down just to get the line moving again. 

Wig

Well, I took a step toward covering my dreadful hair.

I purchased what my mother would call a "wiglet." Just a little mammal to perch on top of my head and cover my now-significant bald spot. Sadly, it also has heavy bangs.

I have named the wiglet Moe, for obvious reasons.

Moe may or may not be going back to the wiglet farm. I was expecting Gary to mock me, and he didn't.

So far Moe has taught me that no one with human hair as thick and shiny as Moe would ever need a wiglet. Also, the clips that attach Moe to one's own hairs are pretty durable; I could take Moe to the Mosh pit. 

I'm still on the fence about Moe. For the time being I can dodge the question of the wiglet reveal. How do you let people know you are wearing fake hair? 

I considered a Zoom background with arrows pointing to my head that say "FAKE HAIR" and "SHHH" and "DON'T STARE AT THE HAIR."

It made me wonder how wig reveals happened during history. Let's say the 60's, when Mom was 30 and rocking her wiglet.   Did my Mom wear hers with defiant pride, her eyes daring her co-workers to say something? Or did she wait until the first day of a new job? 

I don't know. Gary really surprised me by not doubling over in laughter. I would feel better if I could thin out Moe's luxury, make Moe look 50 instead of 20. 

Perhaps I could buy Moe a brother. Maybe Curly! 

Rewriting the Novel: Regression

I was hand-editing the printed draft and discovered that when cobbling the full draft out of the individual chapter files I inadvertently copied one chapter twice. 

That means my 190 page draft is really only 170 pages. It's still 55,o00 words, which is what I'm aiming for with a book aimed at 13 year olds, but it's discouraging. 

9/11 Again

"Why aren't the Emmys on Sunday night," I wondered.

Then I looked at the calendar. 9/11.

I thought, "Well, that makes sense. Can't have an awards ceremony on the anniversary of September 11. I wonder when September 11 will be like the anniversary of Pearl Harbor?"

Already, evidently. Turns out they moved the Emmys to Monday because of Sunday Night Football.

I know that parents mark the passage of time by children. They might say that a child born on 9/11 can now legally drink. (Or that 9/11 can legally drink, which is a bit funny, but not funny enough.)

No kids here, so I can only observe my roof. I replaced it after the Great Hail of 2001, and it's balding. So I suppose it has been a while. 

 

Eye Appointment

So, after hearing last week that three people I know had caught all Covid, I decided the Flu and Cold and Covid season was beginning and I'd better get my health maintenance taken care of. I made an eye appointment and an MRI appointment as soon as possible.

The eye appointment was unremarkable. My suspicions proved true: my vision is worse than ever. Except, the peripheral vision? Better than ever. 

Well, there were two semi-remarkable things that happened. 

Thing One

I was looking at frames and a lovely young lady was helping me. She looked goodnatured, with a jolly, open face, which I didn't expect from someone with a half-shaved head and one of those horseshoe nose piercings. 

She promised to tell me if I looked absurd, and let me look at the pair I had planned to buy, and while she deemed them acceptable, she said, "Look at these."

I had just said I don't look good in dark frames, but it must be I don't look good in thick dark frames, because these were perfect. So that was remarkable: I only tried on two pair before I found something I liked. And the young lady with the semi buzz cut said, "I have those at home." So I share a fashion sense with someone with a horseshoe-nose-thingee, which I did not expect.

Thing Two

I was discussing the images of my optic nerve with the eye doctor.

She peered at the images on her screen and asked, "Hm. When is your next MRI?"

"Day after tomorrow." I said. 

She paused, and then just made a note on the screen. YES. A catastrophic note on the screen the screen that probably said something like, "Visible lesions engulfing the optic nerve, brain detritus clearly visible."

I have had enough MRIs to realize I catastrophize before every one. The neurologist orders a spine MRI I wasn't expecting; it's going to be bad breaking news on the MS-MRI channel. This just added an extra dollop of imagined catastrophe. A dollop on top of the buzzing leg I've had this last month. Luckily the MRI was just two days away.

 

 

Vacation Plans

Just ignore me. I am publicizing my goals because supposedly that makes them easier to accomplish.

The Purging

• Clean out computer / book room. (We call it The Library around the house, but that is an affectation. I don't think an 8x10 room can be a Library.)

• Continue to purge the basement.
• Fix wobbly sawhorses.
• Destroy old PC hard drives with a hammer (satisfying).
• Consolidate miscellaneous basement stuff into bins.
• Contact junk people to haul away the purge.

The Weaning

• Dress Firebox and TV cables.
• Store extra Roku and Firebox in basement
• Set up TV software to suckle at the live news teat.
• Wait for Tuesday when it will be seven full business days and I can talk with Tia and Mike about the phone. 
• Set up HBO because it will not be a promotion as Gary thinks it is.  
• Sever the cable TV and internet.
• Stop auto-pay.
• Deliver hardware back to Spectrum.

Creative Pursuits

• Paint my brother's next dog. Wonder if Monet hated his haystacks the way I hate these dogs.
• Carve the lavender soap into a brain for the small skull in the bathroom. 
• Grate the Ivory Spring soap, moisten it, and press it into the modified mold currently in the basement workbench vise. Wait till it dries.
• Write four hours a day on the Book. That should knock out 25% of what's left for this draft.
• Finish Margaret Atwood's masterclass.
• Start the Oil Painting Masterclass.

Something That Can Only Happen When Gary's Around (That Won't Happen)

• Shop for a car for Gary. He's just talking about it. Not going to happen.

Something That Can Only Happen When Gary's NOT Around

• Self-clean the oven. (TOXIC FUMES ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME.)

Home Repair

• Look inside fireplace to see if the crack that was there 20 years ago us still there and is possibly why the floor is damp by the fireplace.
• Contact fireplace repair people.
• Contact fireplace flashing people.
• Contact siding people for fireplace and window screen.
• Get estimate from roofers. 
• Contact cement people for an estimate.
• Contact door people for an estimate. 

If All Other Chores are Done

• Watch the rest of Severance (I stalled out on episode three.)
• Watch Emmys to justifying paying for live TV.

It is ambitious, but I think it's doable.

Rewriting the Novel: Slooooowwww

So now that I'm hand-editing the novel, you would think it would go faster, right? I don't have to type, just scribble in the margins.

Nope. It takes a half-hour per page to make edits and arrows and strikouts, and then -- and this is what staggers me -- it takes another quarter-hour per page to transfer the edits to the digital version. 

Of course, it doesn't feel slow while I'm doing it. Still, somehow I've spent a week doing this and I've only edited thirty pages.

It'll be Christmas when this draft is done at this rate!

Difference

Forgive me if I've said this before, but I just can't get over different the creation process is between painting and writing.

Draft one of a painting is the best part. It's all,potential, and in some ways it's the best. Clean, broad, loose. 

Draft one of a book is shit. Fussy, overdone, useless.

I guess that's because one is additive and the other is not. You add paint bit by bit and hopefully stop before you have messy garbage, and with a book you start with too messy garbage and scrape it off bit by bit.

The inky thing they have in common is that you want to stop adding or subtracting at the right point. I always seem to stop painting too early. I suspect I'm going to stop editing this draft of the book when its down to a haiku.

Rewriting the Novel: Basic Flaw

Hand-editing is horrifying. On page one, I only left two lines alone. Here are the only two original lines remaining:

"In the month we'd been married I'd found that if I suffered, Joe felt it tenfold." 

and

"Huh. You don't have brothers and sisters --" Wait, I can combine that with the next sentence. So strike that. Gotta fix that.

On the plus side, there's only so much space on the page for revisions, so you can't get too stuck on any one sentence. 

On the down side, there's a basic problem with this book, and it's me. I'm old. My perspective is old. I sound like a biddy. And it's because I'm basing the villain on Jerry's hero, Joe, who is obviously Jerry. Jerry, drunk, bi-polar, violent, self-absorbed. Only, nowadays (trademark term of old biddies) we are sympathetic to the mentally ill and to alcoholics. I'm halfway there, depressive, you think I'd campaign for mental illness,

But the truth is, mentally ill people aren't your safe choice in  husbands. My heroine wants safety and this guy is volatile and there aren't good medications in 1931 Oklahoma. 

He'll need to have some other flaw, maybe, that makes him temperamental. Then again, I never say in the book what makes him moody. I mean, I know, but no one else does. 

Well, it's certainly evolving, if nothing else.

Sad Morning

I had a sad start to my day: I woke from a dream in which I had to find twenty people to go with me to a soccer game and I don't even have twenty acquaintances. And it was a slow awakening too, I spent several waking minutes wondering why I had accepted these indoor soccer tickets during a pandemic. 

Sadly, my sad start was followed by a sadder mid-morning when I noticed some items that might need to be purged from the basement.

The Christmas wrap bin? Birthday wrap bin? Neither's been opened in years. Taking up too much real estate.

The narrow spare mattress? It's been years since we've had two overnight guests. That needs to go too. 

Of course, all I would need to do is throw a sleep-over birthday party for one of my friends, invite 19 other people, and then we'd all go to a soccer game the next morning and everything would work out fine. 

Hat Box Therapy

The big hats have room to stretch out in the Rubbermaid Hat Bin, because each of my smaller hats now has its own hat box labelled with its photo.

Well, to be honest, I tucked all the costume hats in the box on the upper left. I just couldn't stand my tiara rattling around in box that could hold five of them. Now it's nestled among the fez, the toque, and the Santa hat.

And, really, was this not the most insufferable sentence you have ever read? My tiara is too small to merit its own hat box. Pity me.

I wonder what is lacking in my life that I felt the need to organize my hats? I suppose it's the chaos in the basement. Plus the repair-resistant basement makes me feel shabby. 

Someday I need to finish that Grey Gardens documentary. I can see myself wearing a fancy hat and sighing that the raccoons crept through a hole in the siding to steal my tiara. 

Rewriting the Novel: Back on the Horse

Okay, last weekend I almost took up the novel again. It's been four months, more than enough time to forget what I was thinking and to view it with fresh eyes. 

What I should do is print it out, double-spaced, and mark it up. I don't know if I'm there yet, though, that would make evident the pacing problems, and I'd rather fix those after I fix consistency and logic problems.

That is even more tempting now that I could lose it all when I turn my back on cable and take up with the fragile glass fiber optic network. 

======= LATER

Had to do it, if only for the chance to compare my version on the left to Jerry's version on the right.

My copy might look slight, but I say it's at fighting weight. It isn't weighed down with all the tobacco molecules. Or adverbs. 

I need to pick up a pen and get to work. 

Time Capsule

Part of switching from cable to fiber is the email address transition. I understand Spectrum will cut off the email address associated with their old company name. I'm switching all contact information and logins to a gmail account.  (The time it has taken to do that almost equals the amount of time I spend deleting unfiltered spam every morning.)

Most were easy to switch, but my Flickr account was a pain. At some point Flickr was acquired by Yahoo and they changed my login out from under me. It took several business days to get it fixed, and I'm now paying a few dollars more a month.

I was thinking how dumb it was to keep my photos there, given I haven uploaded anything for years, when I got in and discovered that it has quietly auto-uploaded every photo I have  taken for the last seven years.

Over two thousand photos: many crap photos of the inside of my purse, but some valuable photos I didn't appreciate at the time. Some photos were of people I didn't recognize, and I briefly wondered if Gary was auto-uploading his secret second family, but viewed in context they are more likely new in-laws once removed and never seen again.

The renewed access gave me a chance to review photos of our trip to Paris, especially sweet given that I am still ten pounds lighter than I was then. 

Happy Birthday?

My 40th birthday was pretty great.

My 50th birthday was okay.

This 60th birthday is horrifying. Average life span of MS patients? 74 years. When did Mom die? 71 years. That's less than a dozen years to go. Also, the other day my brother commented, "You look just like Granceil," our grandmother, and it is true. Hollow eyes, wispy hair, only she didn't have a wattle. Mom, however, did, as evidenced by her licenses from 59 on.

The math that gets you from 40 to death is hard. The math from 60 to death is easy, and then from 70 to death? Single digits. SINGLE DIGITS. 

What's Smaller Than an Earworm? An Earmite?

Usually when a song is stuck in my head I can hear the whole tune, and most but not all of the words. They says that's why it's "stuck" -- if you look up the lyrics and sing it all the way through it becomes unstuck. That works for me. Other people recommend math problems. I would need to revisit math.

Last week I spent two days with only a fraction of a song stuck in my head - just  a singer insisting "Get OVER it," followed by a series of descending notes. Google showed me all the songs with "Get Over It" in the title, but that wasn't it, it wasn't the title. Just a part of a line.

But ahhhh, the relief when the neurons finally connected. I finally remembered the song it was from: "Politics in Space" by Kate Miller Heidke. It's 2 minutes and 17 seconds in. 

 

Calling Strangers

There are times during my job that I am expected to call strangers. It's not cold calling, which would kill me, but just "Call Jane Blahblah in Compliance and get her sign off."

I hate calling Jane Blahblah. She might be perfectly nice, but I hate calling her, because we're strangers, and it's all the unknown. For all I know she hates strangers too and this will escalate and I will be fired. 

I don't know how I survived by brief college stints as a telemarketer. Well, I do, I held those jobs no more than two weeks each.

On the other hand, if I'm writing to a stranger, not talking to a stranger, I love strangers. (Waves wildly at all of you.) 

I suppose I could investigate Live Relay, evidently they had an Alexa-like voice you could generate from an iPhone keypad. 

So here's my plan: hang in there until the text-to-voice technology becomes seamless. That way I can just type: "Hi, I'm Ellen from Enterprise Development," and a voice will come out the other person's earpiece saying what I type. It could be any voice, maybe not Alexa or Siri, maybe  that of a young girl with Vocal Fry, or perhaps a Canadian man, whatever.

Of course, I would need to be able to type accurately, and that is a lost cause. Imagine autocorrect changing not just what you type but also what you say. 

A Day Out

The slow-moving Real ID Act has finally crawled into my reality and I need a new driver's license that will conform across states, prove I am not a terrorist, and oddly change visa limits for Australians.

This means I had to go in person to the Department of Motor Vehicles. No way to duck it. So over the course of two days I drove twice a day to the DMV, double-masked, checked the line, and noped out. Not a big deal, it's only two miles from the house. 

Visit four was the charm. Start to finish was ten minutes. And, based on the blurry black and white image on the temporary license, it's even a good photo. 

Rewriting the Novel: Itching

Recently, I'll be weeding or some other mundane chore, and I'll think, "Maggie and Joe need to come to an agreement at the start of the resolution chapter."

I wouldn't call it inspiration, I'm not struck by the genius of these ideas. It's pretty mundane stuff. It's just odd that they bubble up out of nowhere. I have the itch again.

I think it might be time to revisit the novel. I glanced at the first paragraph to see if I could see it with new eyes. I did, in that I said, "What was I thinking when I wrote this garbage?" So I may be back to it next week, if not, I did take Labor Day week off.

Divergent Thinking

I had an interesting divergent thinking challenge last week.

The power went out while I was working from home, as it has too many times recently, and the cable and phone went out too.

I assumed the cable was out because the power was out, but the cable company sent a message that they were working on the problem, and the power company didn't. It was particularly annoying because I was messaging my team at the time. 

I looked around and assessed my resources. I had a cell phone at 20%. After about 20 minutes I remembered that I also have an electric car. 

I thought these thoughts:

"Hey, I could use the Mini to charge up my cellular phone." I momentarily paused when I realized I'd have to struggle to get the garage door open without the power, then I realized no, no deadly exhaust with the electric car.

And then, "Well, if my phone is charging I could use my cell phone as a wifi hotspot and get the internet on my iPad." (The mini is a hotspot too, somehow. I see it sometimes on my list, but sometimes I don't. It didn't matter; I could link my iPad to my phone and get the internet, anyway.)

When the iPad connected to the internet, I started typing. Then I had my next genius idea: instead of sitting in the driver's seat and reaching over to type on the iPad  passenger's seat, I could join my iPad on the passenger's side.

That blew things wide open, and I took my work laptop and hooked up to the phone wifi hotspot, and that actually worked, and I joined a zoom call from the garage of my house with no cable broadband or power.

Sadly, I didn't get the audio synced in the Zoom call before the power came back on in the house, and then twenty minutes after the Zoom call ended the cable came back.

I kind of want to test out the whole thing while the power is on.