Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Rewriting the Novel: The Last Chapter

Our teacher had previously instructed us that our last assignment was to write the last chapter of our novels. I was fine with that, because I have something of an outline, but on the other hand my ending is so far afield from Jerry’s ending that I had to make it up out of whole cloth, like an actual author instead of a plagiarist. 

I relied a lot on dialog, but given that Jerry’s book is full of five-page blocks of description, if I wanted any consistency I did have to make up some visuals. I took his first description of the town and reversed it, so all the noise and motion became silence and stillness. And I left the romantic triangle unresolved but hinted at.

As the teacher initially said, we don’t have to use it, we just need a place to aim for. 

I think next I need to plan some more plotting so I can string together the good parts. I have transcribed one or two of his best scenes, and I have some scenes I thought of myself, stemming from my new theme. For example, his hero needs to die. (Sorry, that’s what happens Jerry, you made me into a cruel hard woman.) After there’s a plan I can weave in his best scenes. I think after that I’ll end up with a framework.

I have an extra forty minutes a day I don’t spend driving in to work now, anyway. 

Fast Breaking News

I was working at home yesterday (I suppose I don’t need to specify anymore) and I took a break to get some type of diet snack out of the kitchen.

After my snack I walked back into my guest room/bedroom/office and looked at the news. The crawl said:

US DEATH TOLL SURGES PAST 1,300

I turned on my heel, headed back to the kitchen and ate 6 potato chips and one oatmeal cookie. It seemed the only thing to do.

It reminded me of 9/11/2001. September 11 was the last day I ever used my treadmill. I had been on it daily up till that date. I can’t really explain why I stopped.

I suppose it’s all about control. Why would I diet or exercise to control what my body looks like, if the breaking news says that life is going to kill me anyway?

Disaster Tally, Ho-hum

A week ago there was an earthquake in Salt Lake City, which is not an earthquake area, is it? It reminded me that at the end of February, I woke up and felt a funny vibration. It wasn’t enough to make me leap out of bed, just something subliminal enough to make me start thinking about earthquakes.

I have been in two St. Louis earthquakes, the one in my twenties that rattled the cupboards in our new apartment, and the one that hit a week after Mom died and made the lawyer’s walls sway.

Later that day I found out that the funny vibration was indeed a baby 2.7 earthquake. Still counts though, so now I have survived three earthquakes, one tornado, and a global pandemic. Early days, though, with the pandemic.

Oh, who knows. We are all poised on the brink of death. I know three people who have been poised there for years. Perhaps you get used to it.

Texting

I don’t get many texts. Most texts here come from siblings. The Text Ding stimulates an autonomous stomach-sinking response. “Ding!” “Oh god no, now what?”

For some reason on Friday I got more texts than all the rest of my life combined. At one point I was navigating three simultaneous text conversations. Not fun. I was reminded of when I taught Mom to copy and paste: everything was TOO FAST YOU'RE GOING TOO FAST SLOW DOWN.

Also, I forgot which thread had the bosses on it and I cursed, was told to keep it clean, which then spawned a separate cursing thread involving me and the younger set.

I find it amusing that the young co-workers see me as a sweet grandma who does not curse, so therefore my cursing is hilarious. Must remember to curse sparingly around them so I can capitalize on the shock factor.

Luckily, I work with teachers, so they were glad to show me how to use the dictation feature: that was useful. Most important, they showed me how to turn the damn dinging off for specific conversations, which I then did.

Awareness

People are calling this the new normal. No. New Not Normal. New Global Pandemic. 

When I start feeling normal I turn on the news and catch up on whatever Hell is fresh. (CNN, switch your Breaking News graphic to a Fresh Hell graphic.)

As one of the Special Snowflakes who might die from your snot I thank all of you who are staying inside. I’m also regretting my decision to stay on the Gilenya, knowing if I drop it now it’s ... six weeks before my immune system is back up to speed. (I’m glad I looked that up: I thought it was six months.)

Incidentally, as I type this a pundit on CNN is discussing the feasibility of sequestering only the Special Snowflakes and letting everyone else mingle and develop herd immunity. As I have often said during the last month: Jesus Fucking Christ.

I try to stay positive.

• Samuel Pepys had his best year during the Black Plague. 
• I only poop once a week, so I don’t really need toilet paper. Last night I used the shower head to rinse off after a pee, and it’s really not bad. I go right back into baggy pajamas after, so there’s no real problem with any dampness I can’t shake off. I can go without, and this allows Gary to use his standard small roll of toilet paper per poo.
• Thank God for technology: Amazon deliveries, ATMs, FaceTime, streaming, texting, virtual classes, working at home. I don’t know how they made it through the 1918 flu or the Black Death without watching their friends stream all-request piano concerts on Facebook. 

Even with those positives, I am freaking out. How weird is this? 

Rewriting the Novel: Chapter Four

Well, this is the day I should be going to class, but I am not, because the community college was closed, and rightly so. 

I submitted my chapter via email, and supposedly people will be reviewing it and commenting on it. I’m not really sure if it will happen. I commented on one person’s submission. Somehow she thought I was the instructor commenting, which is awkward, and I don’t really know her well enough to correct her.

At any rate, this chapter was a revision of the second half of Jerry’s chapter about the oil well breakthrough. Again, it took eight hours, but I ended up with 12 pages this time. And once again, the revision parts took far longer than the invention parts. I must not be accustomed to revision. Observe the blog. (Waves around generally.)

I added scenes to make Joe’s lack of emotional self-control more of an issue, and an exchange to add his backstory.  I re-read it this morning and it needs many more tweaks. 

The scary thought is that I’ve written forty pages, which amounts to ten percent of a short book. It seems 8 hours = 10 pages, so 80 days at 1 hour a day = 100 pages, times 4 = 320 days. Well, actually, that doesn’t seem so bad. And then I would have a first draft. Well, hobbies usually last me at least a year. 

Drug Trial

I am what my mother would call a scab-picker. I have a little problem, then I pick at it, and worry at it, and worry about it until it’s a major problem. Then I back up, look at my new enhanced problem, and say, “Oh, that’s ridiculous, that’ll never happen.” Sometimes, I consign myself to the Inevitable, but usually I am comforted.

This is why I did a Google search on “Gilenya Covid-19,” because perhaps my drug is the very worst drug to be on at this time. I did need to have respiratory tests regularly during the trial because they suspected there might be some breathing side effects. So that, plus the lack of any lymphocytes to fight off infections, would probably seal my fate and I wanted to know that up front.

The very first Google hit referenced a Chinese clinical trial that will test for the effects of Gilenya on Covid-19, and I thought, well, glad I’m not in that trial: I would die. I was surprised by two things: a) that it was the first hit and b) that any doctor would think Gilenya would help the situation.

Gary surmised that doctors are so desperate they are just feeding every drug in earth to Covid-19 sufferers to see if one is by chance a miracle cure.

The second hit revealed that some people think the respiratory issues that lead to Covid death might be because of “an overly-enthusiastic immune response,” and that Gilenya (aka fingolimod) might be the ticket to killing that immune response. So I suppose that yes, Gilenya might make it easier to get sick, but it also might make it harder to die. 

So there you are. Scab well picked. I might be invincible.

Ancestry Findings

All right, I’ve analyzed every DNA-verified ancestor pus one extra generation beyond that. Not only am I 100% Flat White, I had to go back five generations to find even one twig of the family tree born in another country. Some fifth great-grandmother came from Ireland. I bet if I researched her I’d find out she was the child of some American revolutionary ex-pats, and wasn’t technically Irish.

They’re all painfully boring, too. I was poring over it, looking for some citizen who was not upstanding, and I did spy this interesting anomaly:

Nancy Ann interrupted her string of babies with Mr. Cummins to have an interlude with Mr. Kimbrough, it would seem. I don’t quite understand how my 5th great grandmother could have babies who were also five generations back, unless ... oh dear. Well, no judgement about that.

Rewriting the Novel: Chapter 3

This week I read aloud Chapter 3, not too difficult because in this class two pages determine a chapter; however, mine was almost ten. One page was all my own original work, and the rest was mostly Jerry, if Jerry went through a surgery that took an entire Saturday to slice him down to one-fifth his original size. I had to edit him harshly because his original chapter was the one that spent fifty pages explaining in detail how every part of an oil derrick works. 

Before I began, she asked me to remind the class who the characters were.

”Well, there’s Silvertop, and Joe, and Maggie — but Maggie does not appear in this chapter.”

“Good! I hate Maggie,” she said.

I said, “Well ... that’s not bad, because she’s the character who changes most by the end of the book.” 

Then she asked, “Is Tangle-eye in this chapter?”

”No, this happens in the morning, and Tangle-eye’s on the afternoon shift.”

”I like Tangle-eye,” she said. This is surprising, because Tangle-eye is a deaf, bearded, lazy-eyed Exposition Man. I suppose she likes him because he speaks in dialect.

Therapy corner: When I read aloud the first chapter one student said he liked Joe. Why? Joe is vain and temperamental. He’s very different from Jerry’s version, in which Joe is clearly a sober Jerry. But it’s my book now, so Joe/Jerry is now my villain and Jerry’s villain Silvertop is now my roguish charming step-father Dan. Why? Spite. Because dead men tell no tales and finish no novels.

My chapter reading was received well. The teacher pointed out I had held the attention of five women with a chapter about oil rigs, so that was good.

Sadly, our final two classes have been Covoided. The teacher has generously offered to finish the last two classes via email, which will be fine with me, especially given she probably won’t be paid for them. She says she does it for the love, anyway.

Marked Safe from Coronavirus in St. Louis

Well, Saint Louis has its first case of Covid-19. Evidently a twenty-year-old woman from the fancy St. Louis suburb of Ladue visited Italy, flew back, took the Amtrak back from Chicago, and is testing positive.

I am not concerned for my own health. This woman could live in the Yukon for all it’s going to affect me. One word above reassures me: Ladue.

I have no truck with people from Ladue. I mean, at one time I may have cleaned the houses of people in Ladue, but on those occasions my hands were full of Lysol and I would have been sterilized from any of their germs.

I was further reassured when I read that while she had only unverified symptoms, during the family quarantine, her younger sister who attends Villa Duschene attended a dance at John Burroughs along with her father. (These schools are so tony I don’t even know where they are. At least Chaminade is visible from Hwy 67; these schools must be behind lions and guards and buttressed walls.)

The father and sister left the dance immediately when they discovered they were potentially infected with the real deal, but until then who knows how many scions and heiresses they tainted.

For once, I am finally glad Saint Louis keeps each social class in its own neighborhood. 

Re-writing the Novel: Chapter 2

I rewrote most of the problems in Chapter 1 even before I got the teacher’s notes. (My four-way conversation was tedious.) There’s too much “the loud man said,” and “said the man in the aisle.” I’ve got dialect that can identify one person, but I can’t use the trick of having Person B say Person A’s name because they start out as strangers. I felt a little bad for having her read something I re-worked anyway.

Chapter 2 incorporated far more of Jerry’s work. Still, I didn’t just cut and paste, I tidied up and wove in parts that will come into play later. Because I have A Plan. 

No one else in class has a Plan, and the instructor doesn’t encourage Plans, and the Bird by Bird writing book by Annie Lamott she recommended doesn’t either. Jerry, also, had no plan, which is why his plot’s an afterthought in the last half of his book.

The Plan was why I felt a little smug when she reminded us that the last assignment in the class, three weeks from now, would not be to write our fifth chapter but instead, our final chapter. Everyone else was aghast. I was thrilled, because then I could just hop over that empty spot at plot turn 1.

We meet in groups of four to read aloud our chapters. I find this inadequate because my eyes are on the chapter, so I can’t tell if the others are bored or amused or confused. Still, I truncated my reading when I thought we were going to run out of time for the others, then when we had extra time they suggested I finish. That was nice. 

Hair

I’ve tweaked Mom’s Doris Day Do so there’s a twisted bit on the sides. It has the interesting result that the next morning it retains what Gary calls the “Nike Swoop.”

Re-Writing The Novel: Chapter 1

I haven’t tried to write fiction since my college short-story writing class in 1981. And now I’m in this I novel-writing class, rewriting Jerry’s novel.

I ended up ditching what Jerry had in Chapter 1 except for three sentences, so the rest was on me. I kind of enjoyed plotting out the beginning and the end of the whole thing, but writing my first chapter was just odd. Everything I wrote seemed at creative extremes. Either it was something no human would ever dream of doing or saying, or it was something I felt had been done or said in some novel I’d read before. 

I was feeling quite creative at one point, and I thought, “Oh, I should put an orphanage in this boom town, and there should be a scene where one of the oil drillers walks toward the orphanage with a child, and goes in and then comes out alone and goes down the street alone and walks in to the tavern.” That seemed subtle and inventive for about an hour until I realized MAN ABANDONS CHILD TO BE A DRUNK, well, what in my life could have inspired that? So that was cut because it seemed heavy-handed.

It was interesting to workshop it with other people. The scene I felt might have too many characters got the note that it was confusing, and there might be too many characters.  The instructor even felt it the pace might need to be slowed down.

“Slowed down?” I thought. How would I do that? And then I realized novels aren’t blog posts or haikus, and you don’t have to edit things so tightly, that you can spend a sentence or two describing things. 

Also — and I say ‘Also’ because I originally typed ‘Another odd thing that I noticed was that’ but I deleted that, because ‘Also’ works, and I still believe in editing — Also, the one or two spots that made me smile made my fellow students try not to laugh. 

Next week’s homework is the second chapter, which I’ve already done, so I’ll spend my time adding back the descriptions I hacked out of Jerry’s first chapter. 

Young College Man of the Week

Well, last week at the college campus, I met a young man who was concerned an elderly woman (me) was out in the cold, and this week I met another young man. 

I thought he was Matt, the youngest man in my class, and I thought he was heading for my building, so I waved cheerily and said, “Hi! I think you’re in my class!”

”I don’t think so.”

Don’t read that as “Why, you might be, but I don’t think so.” Instead read it as:

(Snort) “Ha. I don’t think so.” 

I initially took it as “You are several decades to old to be in my class,” but now that I think about it for the thousandth time, it could mean “You are not in the same social class as I,” so that’s another nice twist.

I need to stop speaking to young college men. But then, I kind of like experiencing social unsteadiness: it keeps me young.

Writing Class

My community college writing class has started. I was apprehensive that I would be the odd duck, older than everyone else, writing the wrong type of book, but as it turns out everyone one of us is atypical. There are seven of us.

Gender: 5 women, 2 men.

Age: 2 in their 20s, 1 in his 30s, rest of us over 40.

Process: I appear to be the only one who believes in outlines. No one else seems to  want to know where they’re headed. The characters will evidently just do things as you type and you go with it. 

Experience: one woman published a book in the ‘90s, a few have finished books but not published them, there are several books that don’t have endings, and one woman has a book full of book ideas. No one else had a rambling unstructured saga dropped in their laps.

When they were discussing my weird situation the class used words like Therapy and Closure, so I had to correct them. My working title is now The Spite Novel, as I intend to improve it out of pure spite.

Concern

“Are you okay?”

A young man asked me that last week. I was entering a building at the community college, he was exiting. 

I was completely fine, so I was taken aback by his concern. I had only a second to think of a reason he might have asked.

”Oh, I’m just cold,” I said, because he would soon discover it was 15 degrees outdoors (-9 Celsius). 

The cold was a handy excuse, and it kept me from huffing, “I am perfectly fine, young man.” That might not have been why he asked if I was okay.

I was opening a heavy door and I’m sure that looked awkward. 

I am in my late fifties, and the young man may have interpreted my sags and wattles as some tumorous face disease.

There is now a permanent vertical wrinkle line between my eyebrows. Perhaps I always appear to be worried. 

Perhaps he assumed — from a distance — I was a plump young college woman, who became increasingly disabled as he got closer. 

What he should have asked was, “Are you lost?” because I would have said, “I might be. My class is in the HUM building. I take it that means the humanities building? And if so, is this indeed the Humanities building?” And then I might have babbled, “Oh the humanity,” and the young man would have backed away slowly.

It was nice, though, that instead of:

”You look out of place, lady! I am concerned about you.”

”Mind your manners, you insolent puppy!”

... we said, “Are you okay?” “Oh, I’m just cold.”

In Which I Make a Wise Spending Decision

I bumped into another article on what to do with your DNA once you have it in portable zip file format. (Well ... more likely an algorithm looked at how my ancestry searches have slowed and it planted the article in Google or Facebook.)

I actually headed for Genopalate, which claimed it can look at my DNA and recommend what my wisest eating choices would be — which vegetables will be best for me, what proteins, and so on.

I got as far as looking up the price, and that’s where they lost me. Not because the price was too high, but because there was a President’s Day sale.

Really? A President’s Day sale? Is there just too much overstock and they need to clear out the warehouse of custom-generated reports? That sounded suspicious.

Then, since I was put off by the sale, I looked up some reviews and found people are not happy with Genopalate. “They said I should eat elk! Where am I supposed to find elk?”

I actually though about it and backed away from the web page. A wise decision for once.

Walking Away

We’ve got some new philosophies at work that mean I have to start projects more slowly and take more breaks.

Usually I get Go Fever: an urge to get everything started and therefore finished ASAP. Now I’m being encouraged to make plans and get approvals and punctuate before I even begin. It’s smarter, but it’s a hard adjustment.

When I’m stuck on a work problem, it’s good to remember the answer’s in the bathroom. It isn’t, of course, but the time spent taking a break jars your brain out of its rut. The doorways you pass through on the way probably help too.

It’s hard for me to slow down at work. I can take a hobby slowly. Hobbies allow and encourage breaks. I play the guitar better after a break. I can solve unsolvable crossword puzzles after a break.

Perhaps this work slow-down is all a plot, and at my next review I’ll be told that I’m just not productive enough any more, probably my age, time to retire. It just seems so odd to take breaks at work. I suppose it’s part of “work smarter, not harder,” which assuages my guilt every week when I take off at precisely 40 hours to the second.

Honestly, there’s a department jigsaw puzzle, and every time I work on it I feel like I’m being watched. No doubt someday soon the pendulum will swing back, when they notice productivity is down.

Moon Illusion Immunity

Last week I read that there was a Snow moon coming up. That article was illustrated by images like this:

There are even more phenomenal images in this article from a few years back.

I have never in my life seen a moon look like that. I have seen references to the moon illusion, and I know it’s a phenomenon, but I have never seen it. I set out to see it.

I did my research, I did everything they suggested. I found a high point with a view of the horizon. I waited until the appropriate minute. I kept waiting. Five minutes later I saw a normal sized faint full moon about five degrees above the horizon. Well, not normal, it was a ten percent larger than a normal moon. A dinner plate moon. I deliberately looked at it with things in the foreground, since I read that helped with the illusion. The moon filled up one of the arches on a McDonalds sign three blocks over. It didn’t look like it was going to swallow the Taj Mahal. 

It’s just like when you’re the only one who can’t see the dolphin in the Magic Eye painting. Do you all see the moon illusion when you look at the moon on the horizon?

New Ancestor Data

The Ancestry.com search has been very illuminating. The DNA data just lays it all out for you. I have all the information I could ever want about Jerry’s oil-working, die-making families and Mom’s ferry-running, coal-selling mother’s family.

The big mystery ended up being my maternal grandfather. For everyone else, the DNA algorithm figured out who the grandparents were, then great-grandparents, and so on. That trail ended at my grandfather Earl F_____, just as if he was the result of rabbit-like parthenogenesis or fell from heaven.

All I could do was look at third cousins and try to see what people we had in common, which was hard, and to search for his name in the local papers, which was much easier.

In my search I found that the Post-Dispatch had a weekly column in the 1940s listing the names of new polio cases and their parents. I found his name there, dated a few months before my grandmother divorced him for his drinking, gambling ways.

I also found several obituaries for a Sister Helen F______, a beloved nun survived by her brother Earl F______. I dismissed that, until I went back to my third cousins’ family trees and saw they claimed Sister Helen, just not her brother Earl.

Three things became evident:

• When one quarter of your family tree consists of an aunt who died at 19, an uncle who died at 5, and a nun, there are no close cousins that will contribute to any DNA forecasts. 
• Earl must really have been a dog for all the relatives to shun his existence.
• I am related to Great-Aunt Helen, nun, ergo bride of Christ, ergo Jesus is my great-uncle through marriage.

I immediately found Gary, proclaimed, “I AM THE GREAT-NIECE OF JESUS,” and blessed him with the sign of the cross.

This means I am Catholic on my mother and father’s sides, so I am MORE Catholic than my half-blood husband with his convert father. I told him I did not mind our mixed marriage.

So, at the end of the DNA road, I have found a celebrity connection to beat my tenuous in-law connection to President Harding.

This totally makes up for being 100% English/Irish.

Midnight Skunk

I was recently woken out of a dead sleep by the smell of skunk coming through my closed, double-paned bedroom window. 

I sniffed myself awake. Definitely skunk. ”This is what happens when you feed the skunks,” I grumbled. “This will be just like when the house one street over stank of skunk for a week.” 

I opened the front door and sniffed. Nothing but skunk. I opened the back door and sniffed. Overwhelming skunk. 

I woke Gary up. “We have been skunked. It’s bad.”

Gary rolled over and sniffed. “Oh, I can smell it.”

It’s more probable that a) he wanted to shut me up or b) he’s so suggestible he would have said he smelled chimpanzee if I’d said that instead. Twenty minutes later he was in my room complaining he couldn’t sleep because the skunk smell was making his eyes water.

When I woke up the next morning, I sniffed both the front and back yards. No skunk. 

”What a weirdly specific dream,” I thought, until I read the Facebook post Gary wrote at 1:30 the previous night, which was about how we’d been skunked.

So now a new mystery. Did a next door neighbors’ late-night visitor recently run over a skunk? Maybe a deer was sprayed by a skunk and circled our house? Ghost skunks? Mass hallucination? I don’t know.

At Long Last ... Pie Pie

I like Frankenbaking.

I've made the cherpumpple pie in a cake, of course -- though it does not seem to have been documented. I distinctly remember bringing it in to work.

And like the cherpumpple, or pie in a cake, I made a cake in a pie.

I've also made a Three-tiered Pie, or a pie in a pie in a pie.

Almost TEN YEARS ago I offered Gary a Pie Pie: a Hostess fruit pie buried in a pie. I never made it, but in some burst of Bakemania I made it today.

Here it is, raw. Simple. Off-brand glazed fruit pies in a raw pie crust with a half-recipe of Chess pie filling.

Not at all attractive. Clearly next time I need to use the deep dish pie pan and perhaps only use two fruit pies laying back-to-back. Slicing the pies to make them fit in a more attractive fashion was chancy - I didn't know if the filling would ooze out.

It improved after baking:

It looks good when divvied up:

Very crusty. Gary says he liked it. I took a bite and it seems the exposed fruit pie crusts are essential: the submerged crusts turn into a plumped-up cakey substance. Not soggy - more like a very moist cake. And then the exposed crust gives it crunch. 

All in all, a success. 

 

Temptation Moves Next Door

Saint Louis has two premium ice creameries I know of: Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream and Clementines. Jeni’s is a chain, and the Saint Louis location is located close enough to other places I visit annually — like the hospital and the zoo — so I can easily make an exception to the diet and taste some. 

I’ve never been to Clementines because it’s just too far off my beaten track, but now they’re opening up a location just a few miles away. It’s by the closest farmers’ market and the best barbecue place. If I can’t make it out, they deliver. 

Evidently half of Clementines’ menu is liquor-laced ice cream, which I will have to ignore. Ignore, not because I’m teetotaling, but because ice cream laced with wine and bourbon sounds like ice cream laced with bile and machine oil. (Parent pro tip: if alcoholism runs in your family, dose your children with honey and whiskey when they are sick. They will forever hate the taste of alcohol. And honey.)

From what I see of the menus, Jeni's has a greater variety. I enjoy the berry crumble there. Clementines’ sober choices seem to rely on combinations of vanilla, caramel, baked goods, chocolate, cinnamon, and nuts. There are two vegetation-based flavors: vegan lemon poppyseed and honey (ugh) lavender. (I’m ignoring the blue-flavored option which is clearly there to placate children.)

However, Alton Brown has approved of them, and they’re local, and who can say no to gooey-butter flavored anything? I’m trying them once or twice this spring until the suits don’t fit.

 

You

I’ve been binge-watching the TV series You. 

It has a nice gimmick: the lead’s breathless inner monologue. More specifically, hours of the lead actor narrating and gushing about his love interest. “I am begging you to to love me, love me, because you are the ideal of all women, I can’t survive without you” and so on.

Essentially it’s porn. Because after a few hours of hearing “I love you” it begins to sound like “I love you, Ellen.” You can’t escape it. I’m sure that when men watch their porn love stories they put themselves in the action in a similar way. Not with the dialog, obviously, but with the .. moaning, I suppose. 

One of my favorite gimmicks in other shows is the narration that breaks the third wall (ala House of Cards, Fleabag), and here we have narration that is designed to make me reach through the third wall and grab it. It’s really diabolical. 

Getting In Between

Dave’s been in two hospitals in Albuquerque for his bile duct problem: the first was Presbyterian (where they tried unsuccessfully to place a stent) and the second was the University of New Mexico hospital, which is evidently the best place to be for bile duct problems.

In the first hospital, his doctor came in the room while Dave and I were in the phone, and he was very nice (and by that I mean he reassured Dave that no one was going to let him die), and that I should feel free to call him if I had any questions. 

I didn’t call him. I was tempted to, because Dave isn’t a reliable source. But the trade-off is that if Dave thought I had access to the doctor he would never talk to his doctor again. I would be conscripted as the go-between. 

For example, when he changed hospitals he didn’t pick up his phone for a day, so I eventually navigated the UNM phone system to talk to the nurse’s station. When Dave heard I had spoken with nurses on his floor, we had this conversation:

“I asked for ice chips twenty minutes ago. Jesus. How long does it take to get ice chips?”

“They aren’t waitresses, Dave. People are probably dying in the other rooms.”

”I could die of thirst.”

”You won’t die of thirst. That takes days.”

”Call them and tell them I need ice chips.”

”You want me to place a call from Saint Louis to the nurse’s station down your hall in Albuquerque saying you need ice chips.”

”Yes.”

”No.”

Hell no. I’m on his side, but it would never end. I would be the new call button.

I’m sure he eventually got ice chips, since he did not die, and in fact the next time I spoke with him (after he hung up the phone, enraged) he was back at home and eating popsicles. 

Touchy Subjects

My brother is very sick. I’ve been cautious discussing it, because my brother is ... problematic, and my family is:

• very frank
• very dark
• very pro-hospice

... and when we use terms like “circling the drain” and “visiting the ice floe” it sounds harsh. Even though it helps us with the hard conversations, it sounds cruel, I am sure. 

His bile duct was obstructed by “a mass” a few weeks ago, and before he had the endoscopy procedure to open it we had the DNR conversation. We got as far as parsing the level of acceptable paralysis. He was up for it until we discussed the acceptable number of paralyzed limbs.  I heard losing four limbs is a deal-breaker, but hands vs feet was too much for him and we stopped the conversation.

He’s out of the hospital now, waiting for the biopsy, and he’s worrying about the bills for the 20% Medicare doesn’t cover. I want to tell him there’s a good chance those bills may not be his problem, and he would be best served by waiting for his prognosis first before he makes any lump payments, but I don’t have a good way of saying that. I don’t want to say “I’ll pay it all off when you die, so hold on to your money for now,” because it features the phrase “when you die”. (It also features “I’ll pay it all off,” which is not a wise door to open around my bi-polar rother.)

Evidently our family can deal with the touchy subject of death, but when you pile on the touchy subject of money on top it’s too much for us.

Head Shape

My brother sent me a photo a few days ago, and I noticed that the shape of his head is unusual.

It’s like Spongebob wearing a yarmulke.

I immediately felt my head and realized I have the same shape. So, there go any plans to shave my head and go about like Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley.

How perfect is her head?

How I Sound

I dearly wish I could speak the way I write. Were you to have a conversation with me you’d be taken aback by how I sound.

This struck me today when, in conversation, I said:

“Sgunna beyah bad winner.”

As I walked away I beat my self up about these specific phrases, in order.

”Gunna? Going to. What is wrong with me?”

(I walked a few more steps.)

“Actually it was S’gunna. That’s even worse.”

(A few steps later)

”Winner? Win-ter. How does anyone understand what I’m saying?”

In context, we had been talking about the impending ice storm, so my friend probably understood me, as it is indeed going to be a bad winter (or alternatively, sgunna beya bad winner). 

Recommendation for Improvements to Ancestry.com

Here are some things I would like to see on Ancestry.com:

• A new menu choice: Slaves. I am dismayed to find some of my ancestors must have owned slaves (looking at you, Dr. Thomas Walker). I started off not wanting to know, but then I gave in to my natural inclination to Face Facts and stare into the abyss.
• I’d like some indicator of which relatives were alcoholics — perhaps a little icon of a moonshine jug over the corner of their tiles. 
• Also, I need a text box that would let me type in anyone’s name and immediately see my relation to them without having to go up and down any family trees. So, I could type in First Lady Betty Ford or some other alcoholic and see, yes, famed alcoholic Betty Ford is your ninth cousin 16 times removed. 

 

Census

I can’t wait for the census. 

I don’t know why I find it thrilling - perhaps because perhaps because it’s so infrequent, perhaps because it’s a tangible effect of the Constitution, perhaps because even the Virgin Mary had to fill out her census form.

I recall the 1990 census as the first census I ever filled out. The 2000 and 2010 census run together in my mind. It was newsprint and Gary and I filled it out in pencil, afraid of making a mistake. (I apologize to my descendants on Ancestry.com who will not be able to see my faded pencil scrawl - oh, wait. No descendants. Well, there you are then.)

Evidently this year they are adding an option for some to fill out the form online or by phone. I don’t approve of this, at all, because I am old, and still write checks, you damn kids, etc.

Ancestry

Well, Ancestry DNA roped me in to subscribing to regular Ancestry, and I am finding the DNA matching to be helpful sorting out my family tree.

I have always thought my maiden name was Lockett, but evidently that is a recent development. My DNA Verified great-grandfather switched from Lockhart to Lockett, for no readily-evident reason. My maternal great-grandfather also switched names from DeWolfe to DeGarmo, but that was because he was a criminal and need an alias to start a new life far away from his seven children.

I tried using Ancestry before to find out missing branches of the family tree, but without the DNA matching and with the name nonsense it was difficult. The new DNA feature just hands you all your relatives on a silver platter - or in my case, a pewter platter. No big names so far, except for the Hogg family in Texas (notable for naming the heiress Ima Hogg), and for Doctor Thomas Walker, an early explorer from Virginia. 

Interesting, but no relation revelations. Still, knocked out all my concerns about having been switched at birth, and I might possibly look up my grandmother’s identical twin’s photos to see a face that might resemble mine.

 

I Am Almost Inbred

I got my DNA tested. Oh, I am so disappointed in my results. 

Here’s where I’m from:

83% Northern Europe, 17% Ireland and Scotland. The most exotic location I can claim is Denmark. Denmark! 



I’m so let down. The appeal of America is that we’re all mutts, and here I’m just a result of Britons taking the ferry to bang some Irish. 

(On the plus side, I have no genetic mutations. No markers for breast cancer or any of the other diseases they test for.)

The worst part is that Gary thinks that only racists take DNA tests, and only to prove that they’re Aryan. I told him no, I was hoping for a little color coming from my father’s side. And now here I am, the product of white people who had sex exclusively with white people. (I suppose that means it was all consensual; no native brides or sex with slaves, so that’s a good thing.)

Am I sad. Yes. Am I surprised? Hah. Of course not.

2019: The Year in Review

Nothing monumental happened in 2019 (as evidenced by our lame driveway/toilet ornaments). So, most things remain at baseline greatness.

The only thing that’s different is my appearance. Not only did I accept my destiny and embrace my Mom’s hairstyle, I went from 220 to 190. I haven’t been 190 since before I started this blog. Of course I’ve spent Christmas break revisiting every carb I’ve denied myself and poof - six pounds came back in six days. 

My health, happily, remains generally the same. Eschewing carbs probably contributed to the single polyp marring my gallbladder. I survived what must have been RSV in March, and I got through the snare drum / fasciculations diagnosis without embarrassing myself too much. I found that brain shadows might be lesions going through re-mylenation, so that’s a good thing. My brain betrayed me in August though: it stopped me at a green light even though I’d lost faith in Gary’s driving after he did the same thing twice in a week.

No vacations, even just to Ste. Genevieve two hours away to see the tigers. Instead, I escaped by going to 26 movies. I’ve seen almost all the Golden Globe nominees — mostly thanks to Netflix or to Friend Anne’s elevated movie tastes. Anne kept me up to date on operas and the like, while Gary kept me conversant in mass popular culture. Gary and I saw Patton Oswalt together, but I attended Kathleen Madigan alone.  In fact, I went to three museum exhibits alone and sort of saw an airshow alone too. There were fewer music concerts than average, sad to say. We fell into the Pixies/Weezer tickets and I fell into the Samantha Fish ticket from Friend #2. I also fell into the entertaining Big Box O’ Jerry: that kept me occupied a while.

I wish I could say my painting abilities have improved, but I don’t know that they have. My best painting is the one I did at the beginning of the year: the teacups. I did like how my second stab at Gary’s face turned out, and faces are more challenging than teacups. What I should do is stop experimenting with a new technique with every painting, but that’s no fun. My guitar skills have either plummeted or soared, depending on how you look at it. I can think the C chord and play it while I’m finger-picking a tune, but that’s only one chord out of dozens. But, given how little work I’ve put in on the guitar, I couldn't expect any more.

In fact, everything’s either plummeted or soared, depending on how you look at it. I shouldn’t look at the last year as status quo, then, should I? I have doubled-down on operas and quality movies, we have a new driveway, and evidently at least one of my lesions is getting a shiny new coat of myelin. I call that a good year.

Happy New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve, or as I call it, the Last Day of Carbs 2019.

Over the past nine days I have eaten waffles, fries, waffle fries, biscuits and gravy, chips, cookies, pie, garlic bread, a baked potato, and grilled cheese.

I haven’t had any donuts, though. 

I feel awful. None of it has been even a bit satisfying. 

I’m still going out to get donuts right now. 

Sleep Mysteries

Mystery 1: I wear my Fitbit for one reason: to see how much sleep I’m getting. Since Christmas Eve I’ve had a suspiciously good run.

I rarely hit that goal of 7.5 hours of sleep. Usually it’s between four and six hours, with a “full night’s sleep” every three or four days. I don’t use an alarm to wake up, I just wake up when I’m done, and I truly am done. I don’t have insomnia. I have a perfectly adequate amount of somnia, thank you, even after four hours. What you see here is a freakish run of somnia. How on earth does my body know that Christmas is over, I’m on vacation, and I can sleep in?

Mystery 2: I’m still curious about my hypnagogic chicken hallucinations, and what they call REM intrusions, but it seems I can’t get to any information on it now without digging through the chaff about Near Death Experiences. It seems that in addition to narcolepsy (which I don’t have) and Parkinsons (which I don’t have) and insomnia (see above), now they are trying to say my benign little dream chickens might be related to Near Death Experiences. They suggest that someday instead of hallucinating dream chickens, I might hallucinate Dream Jesus before dropping off into the Big Sleep.

It’s not always chickens, but it has never been Jesus, though, or any human figure. Sometimes it’s a disordered idea, for example a few nights ago I “remembered” I’d put a lot of money in a special account, and for a brief moment I considered checking my bank app before I realized I’ve never had any special accounts. 

I don’t think I could confuse a REM intrusion with a Near Death Experience. There’s almost no lag between “The doorway’s blocked by a dog eating a pan of lasagna” and “There is no dog eating a pan of lasagna, time to close my eyes and go to sleep.” If I were to see Jesus, I’m certain I would tell Him, “Jesus? Oh wait - You aren’t real, goodnight.”

Review: Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker (Spoilers? What Am I, A Monster?)

I remember going on my first date, at fifteen, to see the first Star Wars movie, Star Wars IV: A New Hope. I remember hearing that this was the fourth in a series of nine films, and being confused as to why they didn’t start with number one, and then when they bounced back to number one after number six, I just checked out. I didn’t see Star Wars I, I, or III: I waited for  VII to IX, because otherwise things would be out of order. When this one starts streaming I can watch I - IX all in a row, if I like.

Because I started with that first date at that first movie in 1977, it was a nice bookend to see the last one with my husband of 34 years. And that’s how I felt about the movie: it’s a completion, a tradition, it can be utter garbage as a stand-alone movie, but it isn’t a stand-alone movie, that’s the point. The critics have not been kind, but I feel Star Wars IX should get extra credit for all the good movies in its past. (Again, I skipped I - III.)

At any rate, I don’t want to spoil the plot, so instead I will give you a medical alert. I had read that the lighting effects can cause seizures in people with photo-sensitive epilepsy, and since Gary has epilepsy I wanted to know what specific scene might cause problems. All my Google searches on the subject came back with “Watch out! This movie may cause seizures!” but no further detail.

So, what people with epilepsy need to look out for are two battle scenes, one at the beginning and one at the end. There is no Strobe Gun or any real reason for the flashing that I could see, unless it’s some kind of subterranean storm lightning. It was dark and flashy, and while Gary wasn’t bothered by the beginning scene, he did have to close his eyes once during the scene near the end. You’ve been warned. 

I enjoyed it, but as I say, how could I not? It’s the last Star Wars movie.

Ring Trigger

Lately I have felt quite put-upon and under-appreciated, and sulky, and pissy. On the pissiest, sulkiest day at work I was in the lunch checkout and the cashier said to a woman in line: "What a pretty ring."

"Thanks," she said, "I just bought it."

My head snapped up. "Well, now I have to see this ring," I demanded, because I have been thinking about rings.  She flashed a four carat solitaire.

I thought, "Women with rings that big are not standing in line at the TeddyJ cafeteria. Fake." Then I thought, "Hey - I could buy a fake ring for myself. I have all these fingers open now."

I could never buy myself a real ring. In the past I have seen women discuss ruby or emerald rings they are interested in, and then they get on line and the group weighs in on the gems and colors, and how pretty, then eventually the ring is purchased and admired but eventually forgotten. In all this I am a bystander, clamping my mouth shut, thinking, "WHO SPENDS 499 DOLLARS ON A RING?"

And now I know. People who feel five times pissier and sulkier and more put-upon than I. I only felt sufficiently put-upon to spend $98 at Walmart on a 10-karat gold modest CZ ring, plus a snug gold-plate ring that clamps my great grandmother’s wee engagement ring on my pinkie. So now I wear a ring from everyone who ever loved me, including me, plus a great-grandmother.

And my God, the satisfaction I feel is deep, people. Everything has been professionally cleaned, I have found the ideal finger/ring configuration, and it all has meaning - even if the one ring I bought myself only means, "I am a big pouty put-upon baby." 

Plus, now I know what women who wear multiple rings are saying to the world. I will keep my eye out for ladies with big stacks of bling and I will be extra-appreciative.

Bow

I dropped off some suits at a new dry-cleaners. The Asian proprietor (it's germane) seemed happy to see a new customer, and tried to shake my hand. He had the sniffles so I tried to fist bump instead, then he grasped my fists instead, and it all became quite awkward -- so awkward that he finished it all off by pressing his fingertips together and bowing.

I tried to make up for it when I picked up the suits by shaking his hand. He immediately sneezed.

Pursuing the Art of Helstromism

Helstromism.

It’s a form of fake mind-reading, in which a spectator helps a mentalist find a hidden object. The mentalist is actually guided by involuntary movements of the spectator’s muscles. The involuntary movements are the same that make people believe in Ouija boards.

I’ve wanted to learn how to do this for a long time. I’ve tried it once before but Gary didn’t have the patience. Retired Gary might.

This is now my goal for Christmas break. They say it’s easy to learn. I plan to amaze my friends in the new year.

Mammogram

I rather enjoyed certain parts of this year’s mammogram experience. Not the squishing, of course. Per the squishing, this year the right breast registered no pain but the left breast was a big old baby.

What I like is the positioning. The technician moves and molds me as if I were posing for a graceful sculpture of Liberty Receiving a Mammogram. ”Dip your left shoulder ... move your right heel back ... lift your chin and turn to face me ... drape your right arm here over the machine.” 

And then I hold my breath while they take a photo. If it weren’t for the squishing I could see paying for it.