Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Dave Food

I thought I was dealing with Dave's death pretty well. My calorie intake bumped up because I was eating moderately instead of getting permission from MyFitnessPal. But then a few times a week I would eat really recklessly.  It was binge eating.

The therapist encouraged me to log what I was eating and what happened before the binge. 

Here are the comfort foods I turned to:

Buttered popcorn. It was just one night, Oscars night, and "Buttered popcorn" is not as accurate as "Popcorned butter." I went through a stick of butter and an insufficient number of bags of microwave diet popcorn. At the time I thought the catalyst was Oscars = movies = popcorn, but more probably it was because Dave would annoy me every year by watching the Oscars on his feed several minutes ahead of my tiVo and spoiling all the surprises. 

Mini Pop Tarts. You know I've been eating these. I've been going through three pouches a day, because there are three flavors, and we are supposed to eat a varied diet. And they look like dollhouse poptarts. I've actually been scaling back on those, palming them off on Gary. I see the connection with Dave in that poptarts, that was breakfast when Dave and I were growing up, Poptarts and Instant Breakfast and Quisp.

Quisp. My god they still make Quisp. I just ordered some.

I promise I will be vigilant to track what triggers me to actually pour milk on the Quisp and put it in my mouth. Right now I think my breakfast triggers are 1)waking up and 2) that's it, just waking up, but no doubt I can pin this on Dave somehow.

TWIL: Dutch Baby Experiment

This Week I Learned what happens when you swap out half the all-purpose flour in a Dutch baby pancake with bread flour, and you don't follow the blending directions, and you put frozen butter in the hot  pan -- and you just generally set your baby up for failure.

Instead of a flat pancake with risen edges, you get an extra brainy baby.

I can't decide if it was the bread flour that made this pancake look so cranial, or if it was the reduced surface heat from the frozen butter. 

It sank as they all do. After that it went from cranial ... to ... well frankly, a little scrotal. But it was extra crunchy around the edges, though. I'd do it again.

I don't know why I can't leave well-enough alone, though. Here's the perfectly-good recipe.

 

Rewriting the Novel: End is in Sight

Well, the end of the line-editing is in sight. Thirty pages of line edits down, thirteen more to go. I am aiming for a page a day, though to be fair I'm circling and skipping anything that's too hard, like "the climax falls apart." (It really does, entirely too much navigating here to there.)

I do still have the list of (now) 23 planned revisions, but those are things like "check for semicolons" and "make dialog consistent for [character x]." I see color-coded post-its for those. 

Though with all that said, yesterday I spent half an hour tweaking the third paragraph on the first page. 

So, progress. But based on the way I write computer programs, once it's functioning correctly I'll recognize what made it difficult, then I'll tear it all apart and re-do it again. I certainly don't do that with paintings, though. Perhaps I won't do that with a book.

TWIL2: This Week I Learned

Just yesterday I learned Richard Pryor did not die from MS.

He died of a heart attack, probably from too much smoking.

I mean he had pretty advanced MS when he died from the heart attack, but still. Seems like Annette Funicello and David Lander are the only celebs I can think of who died of MS. 

 

One Like and One Dislike

Like: The thing I like to do during a work Zoom call is to go off camera, go on mute, then go into the Teams Group Chat and make snarky texts to teammates. I love to watch them react. I know I'm not the only one who does this. This needs a needs term if one doesn't exist. Smiling and Lurking = Smurking? 

Dislike: Wow, I do NOT like savory oatmeal. Thought I would. Perhaps it was because I didn't follow a recipe, I just made steel cut oatmeal and sprinkled in cheese and bacon. It was glutinous and vile. 

Eating 2: Appliances

When I got my air fryer I had big plans. Fish. Chicken wings with fancy sauce. That was years ago. Now I use my air fryer to heat up Pop Tart Bites. 

-------------------------------------

When I got my sous-vide I had big plans. Beef Wellington. Chicken Fricasse. That was also years ago. Now I use my sous-vide for this:

Take plastic wrapped pork tenderloin.

Do not un-wrap. Chuck it directly in the sous-vide.

When done, fish out the labels that have bubbled off and retrieve the package. Unwrap. Do not sear. Make no sauce. Use it in things calling for pork.

Lesson learned: Big plans all come to naught. Go directly to pop tart bites and zero-effort tenderloin.

Eating 1: Cream of Bacon Casserole

So I made the Campbell's Cream of Bacon Soup recipe titled BBQ Bacon Slow Cooker Chicken.

Did I expect it to be delicately flavored? No, I did not. I expected it to taste like equal parts barbecue sauce, mustard, and bacon, poured over chicken thighs. 

Instead, it tasted like barbecue sauce neutered with mayonnaise or sour cream, which was odd because there was no mayo or sour cream. I suppose I was tasting the cream of bacon soup. 

Not bad, but not good.

TWIL: This Week I Learned

I learned:

• Dishwashers have filters in them, and those filters must be cleaned on occasion. Happily, mine just had a lot of soap scum and a chewed-up minor dishwasher piece.
• You can drop off your car for service, but when Mini Cooper calls to tell you it's done, you can no longer say, "Pay for it now, and pick it up later, just lock they keys inside." Even if the service department let you, the car won't. They get squawky if you lock the keys inside.
• The space race was very fast in the late sixties, but there was all kinds of stuff going on in the mid sixties. The Russians flew a probe just shy of Venus before I was even born. Then  we flew past Venus, then the Russians flew past Mars. They landed on both the moon and Venus in a month. And the Germans were the first to get a vehicle to space, period.

Wigs Purchased for Good Reasons: New Styling Option

The next wig I need to rationalize had all my "wannas" in one wig: on sale, long enough for a ponytail or bun, and heat friendly, which means you can curl it, add waves, and / or straighten it.

Here it is in its default state. Not right for me.

But, up in a curly bun? More my style. 

It hit the brief for three things I was interested in. How can you judge me?

Wigs Purchased for Good Reasons: I Would Like to Speak to Your Manager

Here's how I rationalize new wigs now. Wigs don't last forever. I think it's five months per wig. So unless I somehow magically sprout luxurious hair, if a wig's on sale, I will buy it and keep it for later. It's like stock futures. Lock in the price now now before the price goes up.

Evidently it is Rationalization Week. Childlessness, stocking up on the wig larder.

Hence, I purchased  a short version of my first wig, The Chimera, currently in storage waiting to be called back up to the major leagues. This shorter version pixie wig shall be known as I Would Like to Speak to Your Manager.

I shall wear it when I need to speak sharply to underlings.

Rewriting the Novel: Line Edits

I am mired in line edits for the book.

I just did the math: I made a list of 1,806 changes.

(I am skipping anything big, like "climax falls apart.")

I have made 714 edits. 

I need to do 1,092 more.

Luckily, it's the type of thing where you can work for three minutes and knock one out.

I am not doing the math to calculate how long this will take me.

A Long-Awaited Victory

I don't like seeing unexpected FedEx envelopes on my doorstep. (FedUnEx?)

I half-expected a document for Gary about his new car, but it was a document from the Kidney Foundation about the old car. Our donation couldn't go through, because the title didn't show proof that the car had been paid off, and if I could return those original documents in the enclosed FedEx envelope they would appreciate it. 

It took me longer to walk from the kitchen to the file cabinet than it did to reach into the back of the CARS folder and get the exact documents from ten years ago. It was particularly pleasant because on that walk I wasn't really sure I had those documents, and then when I pulled them out I saw they were exactly what the Kidney people wanted. 

Even better, it was one day after Gary accused me of throwing away some important documents. Hah! 

One of my most satisfying experiences in months.

Challenge

In 2008, around the time of Dave Louis, a small sports car challenged my little red Mini at a stoplight. This is how I behaved. 

Fifteen years later? A small purple sports car challenged my new electric Mini at a stoplight. 

This time, I looked at the little purple car on my right VROOM-ing away and thought, “If I stomp the pedal like I want to I will ram into people waiting at the next stoplight.”

So, not as funny, but mature. 

I really would have thought nothing of it, but once I was out on the highway half a mile later, I sensed a car positioned to my right, next to me, pacing me.

I judged the car lengths to the cars ahead of me and glanced over, expecting to see the purple sports car, and truth be told ... I would have floored it.

It was not the purple car. It was this car. 

It was a Tesla, no doubt a Model 3, angered that reviews universally said the electric Mini was more fun to drive. 

The driver saw me turn my head and flattened the pedal. Poof! That car was  gone. Truly, the Tesla went a quarter of a mile in the time it took to think "Oh that's a ---" (Tesla.)

It might not have been a Model 3. It could have been an Plaid, capable of zero to t0 in two seconds (2!), unlike my doggy six.

Two seconds to 60 miles per hour, frankly, is dangerous. I say that in my Grandma voice. Tut.

Manifesting Dental Health

I'm here to put a cap on the buccal dental saga.

When last heard, I had an emergency root canal and went off to heal for two weeks. My jaw was still a little swollen, my tooth still hurt (root canal or not). 

After the two weeks, my jaw did not hurt at all. The tooth was almost insensible. However, the vulnerable side of my inner jaw was a puffy red and white mess, because most of my caloric intake was from taking big bites out of the inside of my mouth. I rested so many popsicles on my swollen lumps that I went over the wall into the next pants size. There was only 2 inches clearance between the me and the arms of the dentist's chair.

I expressed to the dentist that I was optimistic. I petted the therapy dog twice. I was greatly encouraged to find out that the assistant had a tattoo based on a Leonard Cohen song. It looked encouraging.

And do you know how long it took to pop off the temporary crown and put on the new one? Guess. Guess. 

An HOUR.

Evidently there was a lot of extra cement that snuck beneath my gum-line last time, so that had to be dug out. (For the last two weeks I thought there were popcorn kernels in there.)

Anyway, it's over. I should be on the upswing now. No tooth pain or gum pain, and only a little inflammation, and I just had a baked potato and didn't bite the inside of my jaw once. 

Wig Disappointments: Headband Wig

There was some reason I wanted to try this wig beyond self-delusion.

I do have an eBay wig that did not suit, and seemed to me I could dismantle this eBay headband wig and then replace the hair in the other, and with some judicious cutting it could be presentable. (I have evidently reached the manic overconfidence state of the wig hobby.)

Gary won't LET me. He loves this wig. He put it on and strutted about, and when I told him my plans he snatched it back out of my hands. "Nooooo, it's beautiful," he crooned, stroking the wig .

I don't think he wants it for himself, or for me, but he just likes the feel of the soft silky polyester hair. Kind of like having a fake fur coat that doesn't fit either of us. You have to keep it around because it's soft.

Wig Disappointments: Healthy Wigs

I keep returning wigs that don't suit me. They don't suit me because they are designed to look like healthy, young, attractive hair. 

And I am old and unhealthy.

This makes me sad.

I don't think that would ever have looked natural on me, even when I was young. It's a cruel trick of fate that if you were born with thin, curly hair, and you want a wig to look normal, you are trapped into short, low-density, wavy wigs for your lifetime. 

It's a shame, because that brand of wigs fit my skull perfectly, but even the shortest styles are made of healthy, thick-shafted fibers. 

Well, I need to enjoy what i can wear now, because in a few years (months?) I'll need to transition to gray. Gather ye roses, young people who long for good hair.

Grammarly Report

I downloaded Grammarly last year to get another level of typo protection, because TypePad's editor will no longer suffice. 

Last week it sent me an email with some unsolicited criticism.

I liked the Mastery comment best. I am more accurate than 31% of Grammarly users, and I say, what disease do those people have? Are they typing with a stylus attached to their noses? How am I not at the lowest 1 percentile?

It also joins the chorus of complaints about my "tone."

Interesting at the end there. I have been concerned as of late.

In Which I Am Wrong

The things I do consistently:

1.) Turn on the subtitles and closed captioning in Netflix, prime, live tv.

2.) Audibly correct the spelling any time I see "nerve-wracking" spelled as "nerve racking." Last week I even asked someone. "It's spelled with a 'w' right?" She confirmed that yes, like wracked with pain, it gets a w. 

(THE HYPOCRISY yes, I know. I cannot see the beam in mine own eye. I should have out a typo in that sentence just to make the point.)

I saw "nerve-racking" again yesterday, on the CNN closed-captioning, and went in search of the answer, and I found that while both are right, 'nerve-racking' is preferred.

"This is some horseshit," I said aloud, but all sources seem to agree: nerve-racking evokes ones nerves stretched on the medieval torture device The Rack, while nerve-wracking evokes ones nerves wracked and ruined: or wrecked.

One article hinted one was A.P. and one was Chicago Manual of style, and I would hold with A.P. over Chicago, but I think I like the Chicago comma exception. Can't mix styles.

It's odd to me that 'rack' with its dozens of definitions won out over the very specific "wrack," in both the U.S. and England, but okay. I am wrong.

Talk with Hospital

I finally took the first step toward calling Dave's surprise cancer doctor, I called the records department.

• I called them once and hung up on the answering machine.
• Then I drafted everything I wanted to say and edited it for length.
• Then I called them back and read my statement to the answering machine. I tried to sound natural.

In Saint Louis I would expect an answer in a week, but this is Albuquerque, and so I'll hear in two and a half months. Or, possibly, not. I have my theory, that he was in denial that he could die of cancer. He might have thought it would be easier on me if he kept quiet about his complaints, only that is completely antithetical to his personality.

It might just need to be a mystery. 

YouTube Training

Last week I realized the top rack of the dishwasher is broken. Literally, the wheels have come off AND it's off the rails. (I looked to see if there might be more idioms that might apply literally to my top dishwasher rack and I find that Austrailians say “There's a kangaroo loose in the top paddock,” which is ridiculous and I don’t believe it. Big Dot, please confirm.)

It seemed like an easy enough fix: just get new wheels and snap them on. I just needed to find the right YouTube video.

Good Lord. YouTube needs to pull any video that doesn't follow basic training principles. Now, you might think I'm being picky because I work in training. No. One man mimed the entire process. Didn't say anything. Another man filmed the process from such an angle that you could only see the back of his hands. He’d hold up a part, then he'd begin to position it and his fingers would be eclipsed by his hammy hands, then voila, the part was affixed. I only found one woman: her video was remarkable because her first step was to clip off the zip-ties she used to hold the rails and wheels together. I almost stopped right there and got some zip-ties.

I finally found someone with my exact dishwasher, who showed me where to find the part number, then after I had it shipped, said, “make sure the new wheels are the same size as the old ones,” then after I ordered a better set, walked me through all the steps. I am quite pleased with myself, chuffed one might say, now that the wheels are on the rails, and the kangaroos are out of the top paddock. 

Basement Complete

I really should wait for the spring floods before I set the basement to rights again, but I can't take the chaos. 

Evidently I rearrange the basement once a decade. See here for how little I had in my basement in 2013.

In 2013, Gary's ping-pong table took the prime spot in the center of the basement. Now that it has lay fallow for ten years I have claimed the excellent light and put my painting table there.

On a whim I took a bite of Gary's drum area and made a shelf for the Christmas reindeer. 

I appropriated Gary's drumming TV for this little exercise nook, where I fantasize Gary and I will exercise together.

Essentially, the basement was Gary-centric and it is now Ellen-centric.

Gary seemed resigned. The only complaint he had was that he had wanted to re-purpose the new Reindeer Central area as a "trash corner," and I pointed out all there were many other well-illuminated corners that could collect trash. 

My guess is that the next time I go into the basement the reindeer will have been repositioned, and that's fine. I took up a lot of his territory, he can get some back. 

Rewriting the Novel: Soft Heart

Right now I am tweaking the phrasing and ignoring the elephant: the climax of the book is a mess. The tension doesn't build, it just ping pongs. Problem, solution, another problem, another solution. 

I know how to fix it, too, but I don’t want to. I am tired of torturing this imaginary woman. So I’ll spend some more time on the fun stuff like word choice, until there’s nothing left to do but give her an unsolvable puzzle. 

I guess it’s like throwing a party: if the guests are having fun that’s because the hostess isn’t, she’s getting drinks and storing coats. I’ll need to suffer so the readers can have fun. 

The Beauty of Forgetting

A few days ago I tried to make homemade pork egg foo young.

I got all the elements, except for the sake for the gravy. “Like I would have sake,” I scoffed. “But I know I have mirin.” And then while hunting for the mirin at the top of the liquor shelf, what was there? Huge bottle of sake. 

It made me happy to have forgotten it. So happy that I started to look forward to senility. I’ve already had the pleasure of finding the perfect Christmas decorations forgotten in the basement. Perhaps old age is just like that, all the time. I can easily see forgetting that I can play the guitar and then picking it up ‘for the first time’ very easily.

I made the gravy first, and it was a dream. Tasty, full of sake, thickened perfectly. And then of course I found I had forgotten the most important thing about Chinese restaurant food, it is a fool’s game to try to imitate Chinese restaurant food.

My recipe called for me to put 2T peanut oil in my wok and sautee and I would be fine. No. After a very disappointing outcome I researched what I had done wrong, and what I should have done was to fling the egg batter into my industrial deep-fat fryer. Because THAT is how you make egg foo young.

The gravy saved it, though. Ordering Chinese for lunch anyway so I can get the yen for egg foo young out of my head.

Rewriting the Novel: Editors

I am now friends with someone who has almost had a book published. I was surprised to learn some of my assumptions about publishing were very wrong.

The editor doesn't necessarily edit. I don’t know when they changed this, but her agent does the editing. I can see the agent suggesting improvements so it would be met with kindness when it gets to the publishing house, but if the agent is editing, what do the editors do?

Evidently the editors have meetings and determine how marketable your book is, and if it is not, it is killed in committee.

So that sounds awful. I would rather have dozens of cold rejection letters than to get an agent, get his approval, find a publisher, and then get the rejection there. 

I asked if she’s going to try again and she’s currently too busy. I don’t know if I would. 

New Hair

Well, after the holiday break I transitioned from the short sculpted Chimera ...

... to the lighter, longer, wavy-er, wackier Senior.

The color difference is not noticeable on Zoom, and oddly, everyone noticed I was wearing a new headband.

I don't know what it is about the headband that gives me comfort. For some reason I am compelled to wear a headband during a wig's introduction. It settles things down for the first week and makes everything smaller, and I guess ... draws attention away from the wig?

After I evolve past the Headband phase I'm fluffing up my old wig as big as it gets. Before Christmas came, Chimera, the OG wig, was fluffed up by at least 50% and those Liza Minnelli sideburns were behind my ears,  and the rest of it was brushed almost horizontally toward my temples. No headband could contain Chimera! Then I put on Senior  and said, we gotta clamp down this nonsense, and grabbed a headband.

Ironically Senior, the hair of my Senior year of high school, ages me a bit, but that will be resolved by the next wig in the rotation, Bob. It's a wavy chin-length bob, way too young for me, especially with a headband.

Rewriting the Novel: Reading Aloud

I thought the book was in pretty good shape, then I took the step to read it out loud to check the flow.

My god, it's incomorehensible.

I taped myself reading it with the plan that if I heard something wrong I would interrupt myself, say the word "wrong," comment, then bookend my comment with another "wrong" -- that way I could have Word transcribe the recording, I could search for the word "wrong," and make the edits. 

I thought I'd say "wrong" once a page. Nope. Every single sentence got a "wrong." Some got "Wrong wrong wrong." Some got "Jesus God what is wrong with you?"

And sometimes it started out bad and was interrupted by breaking news, as it was last week. Here is a raw transcription,  with no punctuation, and spelling done by computer automation unfamiliar with soccer.

"And sometimes it wasn't his fault he was a fool people leave when it isn't their fault all the time like when they die it still hurts WRONG that whole sentence is peculiar and obviously I'm not wanting to deal with the whole abandonment business Jesus God what is wrong with you get some therapy get into that and what is this ding about oh paylays dead damn hang on a second  I need to text people that paylay is dead that's a shame OK back to the book WRONG."

Rewriting the Novel: Treasure of the Sierra Madre

I was watching The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and I noticed some similaities to the novel I've been working on.

• There is an oil derrick. This similarity doesn't rrouble me. Mine is set in an oil town and has more right to oil derricks than a movie set in the Sierra Madre.
• The oil boss doesn't pay the workers. This similarity dates back to Jerry's original.. It's a scene in the movie and just a phrase in mine, but i can't cut it because it's foreshadowing.
• In the movie the workers are stiffed as above and thus there is a bar fight. My bar fight is entirely unrelated to the stiifage, but still, workers are stiffed and there's a bar fight. The bar fight is in Jerry's original too.
• Someone can allegedly smell treasure. It's just a phrase in the movie, but it's a key plot point in mine. The old prospector mentions a friend who thought he could smell gold. I've got a similar situation with oil.
• Finally, in both there are banditos who feel strongly that they don't need no stinking badges. 

No, that last one's not true. But I am concerned to think that I was too influenced by this movie. I'll have to look back in the archives and see if I wrote the outline after I saw the movie.

Red

I don’t know what’s changed, but for the last month I’ve looked at myself on Zoom calls and my face is absurdly red.

In the photo below the arrows on the right point to significant red blotches blooming in the bright pink field of my face.

The arrow on the left points toward the horrifying Trump-like white circles around my eyes. They said Trump had the white circles because he wore goggles while getting his spray-tans. Not to defend Trump, but I have the same weird circles, and I am not being deliberately dusted with this fuschia shade.

I thought it was my Zoom settings, or the light, but now I think it might be the statin medication. So, it's a healthy glow, I guess.

Retrospective

In years past I have eaten up every year-end retrospective.

This year I made myself add the Time Year in Review to the shopping list, and I set the DVR to the CNN Best and Worst. (Let slip a tear for the TiVo, which woukd have recordrd every other retrospective for me without asking.)

I'm not surprised to see the war in Ukraine usurped Covid and the Supreme Court decision on abortion rights  as the story of the year. Of course, abortion rights synced perfectly with my fertility  - Roe v Wade happened  the year I started menstruating and have evidently stopped a few years into my menopause. I feel lucky to have had those rights while they were there. It almost seems a waste to have not used them at all. 

Other significant things have faded into the background. Thee was one day I asked, "Mass shooting? Which mass shooting are you talking about? The one yesterday or the day before?"

And of course Covid is just something we all take in stride, I guess, unless you live in China and are utterly unprotected.

I guess that explains why I'm not looking forward to the retrospectives this year. Too much bad news. 

In Which My Actions Have Consequences

Dave's death made a convenient dividing line in my life.

On one side I was The Responsible One, but now that we are A.D.: After Dave, I am free to eat, spend, and drink irresponsibly.And you know what else? I don't have to improve my mind.

I haven't spent a moment learning Russian on DuoLingo since I went to Albuquerque. Horrors.

 There have been consequences. Evidently my behavior is having negative effects. DuoLingo felt I needed an intervention and sent me this email. 

Duolingo needs to get some perspective.

 

Secondhand Wig Embarrassment

There have been a number of times I have had embarrassing wig conversations. People tell me my hair looks good, and I say, "Thanks, it's a wig!" and there the conversation stops. For a while I couldn't understand why. They seemed embarrassed for some reason. Are wigs embarrassing to non-wig wearers? Did they feel conned or something? The expressions on their faces were just sheer horror. 

Finally I have worked it out. I think they were suffering secondhand presumed embarrassment. They were embarrassed on my behalf because they thought I was embarrassed. Or perhaps they felt I should have been embarrassed. 

There are a lot of expectations that I should be embarrassed. I'm expected to wear transitional wigs, for example, increasingly longer wigs to give the illusion my hair is growing, because otherwise people would have my unashamed wigginess thrown in their faces. God forbid I switch it up and change hair colors for a day.

It's just odd. I'm trapped in this silly deception so I don't generate secondhand embarrassment. Perhaps the next time it comes up I should just describe myself as a proud wig wearer? I don't know. I'll try it next time it comes up. 

Chemo Snack

I was prowling around the house looking for a salty snack, when I remembered Dad’s favorite.

Saltines with pats of salted butter. I particularly remember him eating these when he had chemo. This is how he would eat them, too: one serving eqaulled one small plateful. 

I was horrified by it when I was a teenager, because really it is gross. You’re essentially eating a quarter of a stick of butter with some decorative crackers for propriety.

Was it good? Not particularly, but I think that’s because saltines today have about half the salt they had back in the day.

I particularly noticed that when I tried my favorite childhood snack: chocolate ice cream with saltines crunched up on top. It was also not that great. On the other hand, chocolate ice cream mixed with butter crackers, like a Ritz or Town House? That tastes like ice cream in a butter pie crust.

Dad's chemo snack of saltines with butter was remarkable mainly because it was the only time I ever saw him eat a snack. If Dad wanted a treat he reached for vodka. 

When I look at drunks I wonder what kind of loss they have suffered that made them drink. I wonder if others look at fat people like that. I ask because I just poured half-and-half on my breakfast cereal. 

The Beleaguered Minnie Ornament

Gary’s Hallmark Minnie ornament arrived with her right arm broken off like the Venus De Milo.

I glued it back on. Easy. Fixed. Then I dropped her on the way to the tree. Here she is on the right.

Her replacement is on the left, recuperating after a procedure to re-affix her left arm that was also broken in transit. These Minnies don’t travel well.

Gary asked that we smash up both and make a Hindu Minnie multi-armed goddess, but that was beyond me. Instead I just glued Broken Minnie’s head back on backwards with her nose tucked between the presents. 

(“Killlllll meeeeee,” Frankenminnie moans.)

Rewriting the Novel: Forensic Literary Criticism Has Been Done

I noticed that in what I am now calling "Dave's draft," things are textbook dull  -- until chapter 3 when the hero shows up. It's buried in Chapter 3 here, but my copy starts with it. 

I started to notice that other things in Dave's draft were regressing, and I compared the two. Based on the handwritten edits, it's pretty clear that Dave's is actually draft number one.

To confirm that, I thumbed to the end. The last seven chapters were just plotted out in blurbs, fleshed out in mine.

Thankfully, some of those planned chapters from Dave's copy died on the vine, especially this one:

"Dude and Ida Mae get married. Joe and his friends give him a bachelor party that results in them taking over a Negro roadhouse outside of Five Trees, locking the doors, and keeping the patrons inside for 36 hours during the party."

Glad I didn't have to read that. Overall, I say thank God that this new copy's the first draft, not the last. The one I worked from is the last, and even at that still pretty unfinished.

I am so relieved I didn't turn up something polished. Would have been grim to find I'd rewritten the Great American Novel.

Terrifying Drive

I was behind the steering wheel, in the dark, way too early in the morning, with Gary, and it was rainy, and there was road construction, and good god -- it was horrifying.

Here are the events:

1. Gary disagreed with me, Siri, and the Mini GPS on what the route should be. 
2. His suggested route took us on a road closed for construction, where I had to make a u-turn, accompanied by Gary's screaming.
3. I chose a better route, a safer route with no construction, and he insisted that we now blindly obey Siri, who ...  
4. ... took us into construction, which would have been fine in the daylight, but I veered into the actual construction area and had to swerve back on the rainy highway.
5. I actually went the wrong way on a major road, and during the resulting screaming I redirected into the wrong way lane on an entirely different road.
6. Gary demanded he drive instead, great, awesome, thank you, and then after the passenger/driver swap neither of us could get the car started again. 
7. We swapped again and when I was back in the driver's seat we found the car won't start with the door open. He insisted I drive home, since I was in the driver's seat already.

It was awful. Gary kept trying to make jokes about it after, and I was having none of that. So, in the future there will be no drives through construction zones with Gary at night when it is raining. And thus my dotage begins.

Feral

Here's something I recently learned.  

Let us say you have been making friends with a semi-feral cat.

You read that cats will show their trust by sniffing your face.  

If you lean in close to a semi-feral cat and gently whisper "I like you best" then the cat will look lovingly in your eyes and then suddenly claw the wig off your head, after which your wig will fly several feet to the side, but if you are quick you can grab it before another cat runs off with it. 

TV - Hooked Again

When we had cable the TV was on all day, usually on some muted news station. Then in the evenings something was usually being taped for later. 

Now that we have the fiber streaming service, the TV is almost never on, unless there is breaking news like election coverage or a sports game. 

Why? Because the hunt is gone. You never get the thrill of stumbling across a repeat of your favorite episode of your favorite show. The excitement of,  "Oh, look, American Experience has that new documentary I heard about." 

Now? None of that. I don't hear the radio so NPR doesn't give me new beasts to hunt, and I don't run up and down the channels so there are no surfing safari finds. There are entire days when the TV is not on at all. And all I record is Colbert, SNL, and Rachel Maddow, I suppose because they're all topical enough that I might not get what's going on if I wait to watch it later.

However, today it rained, and I remembered that Christmas it rained for a month, and I stayed in and watched a marathon of The Curse of Oak Island. I got hooked on that damn show. Even still, after years of arguing with the narrator. (Him: "Have the brothers found gold in the treasure shaft?" Me: "NO. They have found trash. Give up; it's a sinkhole.")

Well, now of course that sent me off to record the new season and I find I have missed four episodes.

I thought, "That's four hours in real time; I don't know if I can do my 20 minute fast-forward digest version on this new TV setup."

And then I swear to you I thought, "But I have to watch them, they might have found something." 

And then I laughed and laughed.

 

Covid Vaccine Eight / Not

I was listening to health officials urge the populace to get their boosters, and it occurred to me that I might be overdue for my next booster. And I am, by over a month.

Remember the days when I went the earliest day possible?  And here I am overdue. I think my natural need to avoid death has really dropped off now that I've had a sibling die. Seems pointless to watch my weight or alcohol intake. That's the only reason I can think of for spacing out on my shot: my post-David laissez-faire attitude about life and death.

So I quickly filled out the on-line questionnaire and lined up at the CVS yesterday afternoon. 

"Was your previous shot the bivalent shot?" they asked.

"Yes."

"Well, we can't give you another shot then, because the CDC hasn't given any guidance on that."

Frustrating, given that the on-line questionnaire asked that same bivalent question, I gave the same answer, was cleared, but now I was stalled.

So, they advised that I keep my eye on the CDC website to see if the policy changes and then try again.

Hmph. Another mark against CVS. I'm curious to see what Walgreens or the neurologist might do.

Rewriting the Novel: Chapters 1 and 2

Well, this this latest version of Jerry's novel launches by letting you know all about all the characters, and frankly I can't tell who the main character is anymore. And really, I don't know which is better: getting a fifty-page long textbook on oil derricks in chapter six or thirty-five pages at the start. 

What I like best is that he has a technical editor now, someone who is an expert in the oil drilling trade, who is a little disgusted at times with Jerry's lack of knowledge.

I have to assume the editor who says "No!" is Jerry's father Ellis, a.k.a. "Grandpa Son" -- he was a roughneck. Of course, I'm imagining that because I've grown bored by imagining a relationship with Jerry through this book, and now I want to rope in my absent grandfather.

I imagine Grandpa Son would be proud that I already knew how to pronounce the abbreviation for blowout preventer. ("Bop.")

... but probably sad to hear I learned it from Wikipedia.

I Swear This is the Last Wig Post

I found a wig that looks pretty much like the hair I had in my senior photo. 

(Another way to view things is to say "In my senior photo I look like I am wearing a wig." I choose not to see things that way.)

This is me in the wig. I call it Senior.

Then I found I have the same style of shirt.

I tried to recreate the pose and the expression, but I don't think it's possible for me to still look that innocent.