Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Paint Update

So back at the end of April, I gave up on my oil painting of Gary in Bath at this stage:

The original looked like this:

Since then, I have a) decided the previous one was a "study" and b) decided I'm painting, not drawing, and that God invented carbon paper for a reason.

So, after I repositioned some things I traced Gary's face on the canvas. I got this far on my second attempt:

For the stone face I used the palette knife (embiggen to see), because God knows I wouldn't want to focus on reinforcing the skills I have.

I haven't touched it for two weeks. I suspect that's because I'm at the point where I don't hate it, so it can only get worse. Of course, now that I look at it, the right side of the stone face is too dark and small, somehow, and even though I traced it, the mouth on the stone face is skewed down on the left side.

I’m also working on this painting I did based on Friend #2's photograph on the left below. I hated this last week, but now it has grown on me.

Oh, wait, I can see two things wrong right now. I hate it again.

Dolman Sleeves

A saleswoman approached me while I was looking at clothes. Because I was at the swanky Plaza Frontenac, it somehow felt wrong to say,  “I’m just looking,” because of course I wasn’t just looking, I was looking and touching. I wasn’t pawing at the merchandise, in fact I was delicately holding it between thumb and index and my pinkie was upraised, because, as I say, swanky Plaza Frontenac. Plaza Frontenac, where I think “just looking” is probably frowned upon, because that’s the type of thing people without money do. 

That’s why instead of “Just looking,” I answered her with, “I’m looking for something with dolman sleeves.”

It isn’t the eighties, anymore, so this was a perfect ruse. I wish we still had dolman sleeves, or batwing sleeves, or even a generous raglan sleeve, because I am pear-shaped. But I remember when Mom’s lack of arm mobility had me looking everywhere for dolman sleeves, and they are very hard to find. 

I used that line everywhere. 

• Neiman-Marcus - puzzled, shook her head.
• Chicos - really tried, actually got me int0 a scarf/kimono top.
• Brooks Brothers - did not know what dolman sleeves were until I said “raglan” and she said, “oh, dropped sleeves.”
• Eileen Fisher - agreed they would be the place for dolman sleeves (at that point I had convinced myself I really wanted dolman sleeves), but they did have a few things with “ample sleeves.”

I couldn’t use the ruse at Williams-Sonoma, so I was honest and just said, “I’m killing time before the movie.” That broke the spell. 

Of course, they’ll remember me at Plaza Frontenac, so next time I’ll need to look for some other hopeless thing, like neon Qiana fabrics. It would be horrifying if they stocked their stores with dolman sleeves because of public demand.

Little Girl

I was in a stall in the movie theater bathroom when a woman came in with her child.

"Don't touch that. Here's some paper. Don't sit on the actual toilet. I'll be in the next stall."

This always makes me feel very self-conscious. Some day I will have to try peeing in the hover position. I know no one could have a bowel movement from the hover position. Those people don't poop anywhere but home, I'm sure.

Anyway, out of us three I finished first. I washed my hands for a good sixty seconds, because I knew the mother in the stall was judging me. Then I actually dried off with the blower. I had fun watching the g-forces ripple my hand skin.

Then I turnd and noticed the little girl was out and staring at me.

Then she made a little wave.

I waved back. I reminded myself that little girls who can't touch anything also can't talk to strangers, so I said nothing.

Then - she came over and hugged me! I swear, I did nothing to provoke it. I don't know if she wanted to break the awkwardness of standing in the bathroom with a stranger she couldn't talk to, or if she was being a little rebel, as if to say, "What's that, Mom, don't touch anything? I'm touching this dirty woman! Who knows where she's been!"

Then Mom burst out of her stall with, "DON'T GO ANYWHERE WITHOUT ME," I suppose because the child had spent a moment without an order, so I left. But it was sweet.

 

 

Baby Feet Knock Offs

I have little goat feet. I don't moisturize, and I rarely wear shoes. My only foot care is to intermittently scrape off the calluses with a callus remover.

That said, when I was giving myself facials for Opera Month, I picked up a Knock-off Chinese Foot Peel. It's all the craze now: you soak your feet in little booties filled with liquid, then in about four days all the skin on your feet sheds off in sheets and are left with the bare minimum of foot skin.

The most popular brand is called Baby Foot. If you Google images of Baby Foot Peel you will say, "Ugh," then, "More like Leper Foot Peel," and then if you are me you will research up the main ingredient and get very excited about applying leather tanning agent to your feet.

Four days after I used my knock-off foot peel, about half of my problem skin came off as suddenly and dramatically as promised. I wish I'd been strong enough to follow the instructions and not help pick it along. The other half of my hardened callused skin stayed put, giving my soles a nice lunar surface look for Moon Week.

I bought another knock-off brand on Amazon, and after eight days it activated: now I’m down to one-quarter of my problem skin. I can see where this is heading - nail biting, scab picking people like me should not be allowed to purchase this product. They recommend you use this product once every three months. This next one will be my third in three weeks. But I swear I will stop after this next one.

Moon Misapprehensions

Moon week! Anniversary of launching to the moon!

I have done nothing for the last week but watch Apollo space program documentaries. My brother would say this is because we were not allow to stay up until ten to watch the lunar landing.

There is a problem with having been a child during the Apollo program: if you learn something that is wrong you can't shake it, even as an adult who obsessively watches every moon shot documentary there is.

I visited Johnson Space Center once when we lived in Houston, because my father worked there, and somehow in my child mind I decided that all of NASA was located in that one building where he worked. Granted, Mission Control was in that building, but I always thought that the modules were built there and the rockets blasted off from there. I think part of my confusion was that they re-named Cape Canaveral to be Cape Kennedy, and for years I thought Cape Kennedy was the launch site in Florida and Cape Canaveral was the launch site in Houston, you know, outside the building where Daddy worked.

I am fairly sure I asked where the rockets were, and he said "very far away," and I assumed that meant the next exit on the highway or something.

And I still can't shake it. I'll see the launch pad and think "Houston," I'll see people waiting for a launch sweltering in the Florida sun and I'll think "Houston." 

I know I should go back, especially since they've reopened Mission Control. Perhaps that'll get me straightened out.

Clothes Shopping

I went out shopping for clothes, because my personal fashion pendulum has swung again.

Three years ago I turned against all shirts with patterns and buttons. They all looked messy and the collars were always askew. I gave away anything buttoned. Every shirt I own now is in a solid color with a scoop neck that I can pull over my head.

Recently two things have happened:

1. My plump little wattle has morphed into a turkey wattle terminating in a stack of neck rings echoed by the scoop collar and
2. I have been watching old episodes of The West Wing and admiring C.J.'s style.

Before and After

"I could do that," I thought, "I could get a white shirt and pair it with a suit and a shell and leave the top three buttons open."

Because that look is TIMELESS, not dated at ALL, only of course it is. Still, I wanted a shirt with buttons and a collar to hide my neck, if only in profile.

After two days of shopping I have grown to appreciate my current wardrobe, because everything I have tried on either flattens me or plumps me in the wrong spots and somehow I gain thirty pounds in the dressing room. It's like I've been living in a clothing bubble, surrounded by friendly flattering clothes, and now I've had to meet clothing that hates me and does not share my views.

After two days I ended up with three shirts, none of which look at all like the shirt above, only two of which have buttons, but at least I look like a human in them.

Pilgrimage to Big Joel's: Deer

Big Joel's Safari has a new feature called the Deer Encounter. You are allowed to go into an enclosure where there are several deer who are so familiar with humans that they will let you walk among them. I knew about it because a staffer told me personally because we were one of two couples there at that time, because there was an impending thunderstorm. (I asked Big Joel himself: he said it had been very busy earlier in the day. Everyone else was avoiding the rain.)

The sign on the deer enclosure warned me that I needed to walk slowly and calmly, and not shout, and the deer might even let me touch them, but I couldn't touch their antlers. I slowly crept in and was greeted by a staffer who pointed to a spotted deer lying down 10 yards away. The staffer said the spotted deer was pregnant.

"Won't that make her cranky?" I asked. "I've never been pregnant, but I understand it makes ladies very cranky."

No. It makes ladies hungry. I was just coming into the pregnant deer's peripheral vision, when the deer hopped up, came over to me, and bumped my jumbo plastic cup of feed with her nose. And then for ten minutes I fed her. She chewed, bumped the cup, I put more food in my hand, repeat. I was unable to pet her, because I held the cup with one hand and she ate out of my other hand, and she was running the show and there would be only eating: none of this petting nonsense.

I really wanted my husband to see it, but animal behaviorist Gary was protesting the unnaturally tame deer. He turned his back on the enclosure and tried to bond with the naturally skittish deer behind the fence. I couldn't call out to him because of the no screaming rule.

He eventually turned around after I was set upon by two more dark brown deer. The spotted deer was still knocking the cup, so one of the brown deer decided that she would communicate her desire for food by chewing on the front of my shirt. So then I had two deer to feed, and still no hands to pet them with. The third deer was not interested in the grain I was handing out; she just wanted to be nearby to taste some flesh when my body fell to the ground and was trampled.

Eventually, when I was down to the dregs, Gary turned around and came over and consented to feed the deer so I could pet them. He then insisted we walk on a gravel perimeter path to the other side of the enclosure so I could see the deer he had bonded with. All three deer trotted next to me like they were my pet deer now. "Take us home so we can enjoy some onion soup or whatever else you have left over." Eventually after three minutes the two brown deer gave up. I had to pointedly put my hand over the feed cup and shake my head sadly at the spotted deer before she left my side. But for a good twenty minutes I felt like I had my own deer.

Pilgrimage to Big Joel’s: Goats

Gary has finally recovered from the driveway experience and feels safe leaving the house. I really expected him to stay at home and nurse the driveway all week, especially because he read that you are supposed to water a new driveway up to ten times a day. (Evidently the longer it takes to dry the fewer cracks you will have.) He's also rounding up all numbers. If he heard that you don't walk on it for a day then we can't walk on it for a week. You can't park on it for a week rounds up to you can't park on it for a month.

We took our yearly trip to Big Joel's Safari Park and Petting Zoo, where all goats are either pregnant or nursing. My favorite was one that sounded just like a screaming goat. I had no choice but to scream back at it.

Goat: "AAAAAAA!"
Me: "AAAAAAA!"

After a few minutes of this, I heard two staffers. "Do we have another one?" "No, it's that lady."

I felt a little proud that I had mimicked a screaming goat so well, until I spoke to one of the staffers.

1. There is no sub-species of goat called a screaming goat, I was thinking of fainting goats.
2. The goat I was parroting was a momma goat who was calling for her child (clearly because she was full with milk).

I was worried that I had come between a mother and child.

"Enh, she'll figure it out."

There must be 100 goats at Big Joel's this month. I think they sell the goats at the end of the season. I could buy that mother and child and set them free in our yard.

Today I Learned

I just got the Mini back from the Dobbs Tire shop, where somehow the cheap inspection was parlayed up to $800 worth of repairs.

The next day, I was tooling down the road and my Flat Tire indicator came on. The one that looks like a butt.

I took the car back to the shop, where the mechanics checked the tires, found them sufficient, then gathered to solve the mystery of where the tire indicator light reset button was. It was a mystery because my 2005 car is so old that it isn’t listed in any reference document. They looked under the dashboard and in the glove compartment. Eventually they found it ... in plain sight between the seatbelt latch and the parking brake (which they called the ‘e-brake,’ because my car is so old there has been a great vowel shift).

I have had this car for almost 15 years and I have never seen this button. For any mechanics googling “Mini Cooper flat tire light reset button,” here it is:

Has a little butt on it and everything. I was gobsmacked.

Opera Prep: Changing the Tempo

On an average day I take 15 minutes to get ready for work, 25 if I'm washing and drying my (scant) hair.

This was not the schedule I took while getting ready for the opera.

The opera season is over now, but every Saturday before the opera, I would take an entire day relaxing and getting ready, as if I were going to prom. Well, prom, but only if I had to make my prom date Gary promise not to talk to me so I could actually relax instead of getting all worked up with his nonsense.

First, I would spend time relaxing in bed and sleeping as late as possible so I wouldn't fall asleep mid-opera at 9:30, which is evidently my age-enforced bedtime.

Around one I would evaluate my hair and the weather to see what the plan of attack would be. There was the rainy day hair plan and the hot day hair plan and the windy day hair plan. And on top of that, last Saturday the Tiara threw an extra variable into the plan. I wouldn't do anything at one with my hair. I'd just plan.

Then, I would start assembling the components of my ensemble, and select the shoes and bra and jewelry, and lay it out. Then, I would take photographs of all the permutations and decide on the one that looked the best.

After that I'd bathe and commence implementing Stage 1 of the Hair Plan.

I'd stop drinking fluids, because you can't just pop out of the opera and expect to get back to your seat in the middle of someones aria.

Deodorant was applied with a one-hour drying window. Half an hour was devoted to a relaxing face mask. Another half hour was spent measuring, plotting, and plucking the eyebrows.

About an hour before it was time to leave - which was actually four hours before the actual opera was to start - I would start putting on clothing (specifically anything that might muss the hair or touch the makeup).

Then I would begin implementing Stage 2 of the Hair Plan, which frankly would sometimes end with me just brushing my hair out and plastering it back together with hairspray because the weather shifted.

Then, there was the makeup, which incorporated the special Clinique rarely-used foundation and various eye-bag unguents.

After asking Gary how I looked ("Fine!") I would head off to my friend's house, with an extra fifteen minutes to get gas in the car, buy pre-opera picnic food, or duck in to the pharmacy to buy and swig a small bottle of Pepto-Bismol (again, one cannot just leave ones seat, and I wanted to quash any nonsense and rumblings). No chaos. No crisis. No rush.

Finally, after hours of preparation, I would pick up my friend who, I swear to you, would decide what she was wearing minutes before she put it on, which was seconds before she would brush her perfect, thick, weather-independent, straight hair, which was followed by zero seconds applying makeup because she doesn't need it.

Painting

Two nights ago I painted downstairs for about hour. After that, while I was cleaning up the oil paints, I picked up the soda I’d ignored, took a swig, and felt something shift on my head.

I suddenly remembered that on the way downstairs, my hands were pretty full with some painting supplies, so when I had to take down the tiara as well, I just jammed it on my head.

I had painted for almost an hour in my tiara, oblivious.

The odd thing is that Gary came down halfway in, said hello, saw me painting in my tiara, and didn’t comment on it.

 

Tiara

So, last week was a Bye Week for the opera, but tonight brings the premiere of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, and given that I muttered "trigger warning" at the intermission of Rigoletto with its rapes and abductions, I don’t know how much I'm looking forward to an opera that might be about incest and sexual abuse. However, the author of the original book showed up on T.V. last week and if he comes I’m certain I could spot him due to his distinctive beard, so that’s exciting.

I am wearing my frayed fringed duster vest for the opera this week, in contrast with next week, when I am blinging out for the Coronation of Poppea.

A big part of the Coronation costume arrived last Friday:

It was purchased for twenty bucks on eBay, and I knew it would fit my tiny pea head because I had tried on similar ones at David's Bridal.

I told the saleswoman why I was getting a tiara at my advanced age, that it was for the opera, and I thought I had explained the situation completely when she asked me, "When's the happy occasion?"

I blinked at her a few times. "The opera? It's later this month." (Jeez, lady. Look at me.)

The e-Bay tiara is missing two rhinestones, but as they say, it'll never show on a galloping pony.

Toto Fails Me

The Toto toilet has been dependable (read: doesn't clog) since last August when we met it and it became part of our family.

Last week began with a four-day period of bowel inactivity. This is average. This is not cause for concern. It is well below my personal best of two weeks. However, when the inactivity was ... over ... the Toto did not dispose of it in its usual charming way, with the deluge and the woosh and the disappearance and the satisfying ca-chunk (go here, jump to 32 seconds in). Instead, there was the deluge, the disappearance, and then it acted like a normal toilet. It filled and it drained, only slowly, and no soul-satisfying ca-chunk.

I told Gary, and thus began an evening of toilet diagnosis. We got quite an education in plunger types and plunging technique. He would see a video, try that technique, I would read an article, try that technique, and all along the Toto would just drain slowly and, as I say, no ca-chunk, the Toto way of saying, "Poop? What poop? No one poops in this house."

This lasted till two in the morning when I pleaded with Gary, "Stop. It. Stop flushing. Stop plunging. I have to get up in the morning."

In the morning, of course, the first flush showed great improvement, and the second ended with the ca-chunk that filled my heart with song.

This week, it has now been five days.

One More Opera Story Before We See the Next Opera

I was in the lobby of the theater, admiring the effort people put into their attire for the opera, especially the two women in full-on ballgowns. One wore a silver ballgown: she had blonde hair, and she was followed by a brunette similarly dressed up.

I nodded at the brunette and said, "Nice." as if to say, "I approve of the effort you put into your dress." She smirked at me, or winked at me, or somehow acknowledged me.

Imagine my humiliation when I looked on stage mid-opera and saw the silver ballgown, with the blonde still in it, because she was playing Countess Rosina. And then I realized the brunette I spoke to was Susanna, the other female lead.

So, evidently the cast moves through the audience in the lobby beforehand and are not just cute kids playing dress-up who need your encouragement! Who knew? Not me!

I will be looking closely at everyone in the lobby tonight who appears to be well-dressed and might have lung power.

 

Irritable Shopping Syndrome

Last week I had to find something to wear to the opera. It was almost an impossible task. From Wednesday through Friday I was shopstipated, and then on Friday the floodgates opened and I bought like mad.

Wednesday, everything looked adequate. Not special. I kept seeing things that would be great for work, until I touched them, and then the rubbery polyester made my skin crawl. I bought three work-worthy natural fiber blouses, but nothing special that said, "I made an effort for the opera."

Thursday, I gave up on my mall on the rural side of the Missouri to one closer to the city (West County). Salesladies would ask if they could help, and I would either touch some polyester and shudder, or I would shake my head and say, "I think I'm in the wrong store." Truly, I would go into a store to discover the demographic had changed from opera-lover to pot farmer. Nordstroms was particularly jarring: all shabby linen shorts.  I saw a few things that might have been nice, but instead in this on-line age it seems stores want to display their clothing in the same fashion you would see it in an Amazon box: wrinkled and wadded up.

Friday, though, I got my act together, and I knew where to go and what to say. "Floaty, with sleeves, for the opera." I had done some pre-shopping and found a kimono at Anthropolgie, a store I had only ever gone into as far as the first price tag. I then had a purpose: find all the kimonos at the Galleria (even closer to the city), test the limits of "One Size Fits All," and then coordinate from there.

After I scooped up three kimonos, linen pants, plus seven work-worthy bras, tanks, and blouses, I was set for the opera season.

Did I have on last-minute beer goggles on Friday? Not sure. We shall see in a few weeks when I attend the Opera in these pants (they're linen, so picture them bunched up around my knees).

I will pair them with the thirty-four year old silk Kimono from my trousseau, and a tiara, because the opera is the Coronation of Poppea.

It's Tornado Season Again

In the last week or so I've heard the tornado sirens twice, twice watched the Channel Four Storm Tracker point the tornado Parallelograms of Death directly at my house, and even took cover in my basement once.

(The Channel Four weatherman is a big fan of phoning up your friends who are in the tornado's path and telling them to seek shelter. At one a.m. during the Jefferson City tornado he exhorted us to call our friends in JC, wake them up, and tell them to seek shelter. Had I any friends in Jeff City I might have done it, but what if they were already in the basement? I would hope they would stay in the basement muttering, "Yes, Ellen, I know there's a tornado.")

Everyone at work has a tornado story: just tree damage like ours, or a roof gone, or entire rooms gone. Friend 4 once lived in the apartments that were damaged in the Jefferson City tornado.

Tornadoes are getting too close.

(Photo of Channel Four weatherman pointing approximately at my house alerting me I have 14 minutes to live.)

Where I Could Live

I know at some point in my life I will be alone. No kids, older husband, unwell brother.

I think about leaving. I know, no matter where you go, there you are, but by the same token, I could be me anywhere. Anywhere on earth.

A friend planned to move to France upon retirement, but it turned out she still has family obligations that held her at home. I don't have those obligations.

Would I stay in the States? I wouldn't have to. (Seriously, States, President Donald Trump?) Would I stay in a city? I think I need to be close to an MRI machine. And croissants. Would I need the English language? Well, that would certainly give my neurons a workout: learning German or Italian.

Freedom, though. Incredible.

I suppose if I'm old enough to be free of my location, I'd be old enough to want the familiar, though.

Opera Fan

After Friend Anne and I went to the opera last year to see The Trial and La Traviata, we got season tickets for this year. This year we get to see The Marriage of Figaro, Rigoletto, The Coronation of Poppea (quite old), and Fire Shut Up In My Bones (a modern story).

I am very excited to see The Marriage of Figaro in particular. Still, a little bit of me is afraid I've already heard all the good parts. Will it be like a movie where the good stuff is all used up in the trailer? I'm worried. Don't tell me! No spoilers.

Add Birding to the List of Old People Behaviors

The other day I was looking out on the patio and I saw a new bird. I raced to the birding book, misidentified it as a Fox Sparrow at first, but now I know it's a Brown Thrasher. (By his song ye shall know him.)

It's an entertaining animal. It hops, and with every hop its tail bounces like a lever, like it's a railroad handcar.

When I thought it was a Fox Sparrow, I had Gary buy birdseed with millet, for that is what Fox Sparrows eat. Brown Thrashers will have none of that -- we have plenty of what they eat: nuts.

(In the same vein, if you want skunks in your yard, buy Purina O.N.E. Lamb and Rice Dog Food. Back in the day we had loads of skunks selectively eating the lamb chunks: now that Gary's stopped putting out dog food we see no skunks.)

I suppose birdwatching is an elderly person hobby for the same reason doing jigsaw puzzles are as well. Both rely on your subliminal powers of observation. I've started to notice that I race through jigsaw puzzles after a minute or two, not because there are fewer pieces, but because my subconscious has observed all the details and I don't have to manually pick them out. I think at some point you have seen enough birds in your life that eventually you move into a new detailed level of observation. Birds stop being "brown bird" and "mean bird" to Fox Sparrow/Brown Thrasher and Blue Jay.

Really, I'm not even 57. I shouldn't be eating Werther's and birdwatching. What is left? Bingo?

Ring-Naked

I generally don’t take off my wedding and anniversary rings, but I need to prepare chicken wings and then I have landscaping ahead of me, digging up rocks, so I am going to be ring-naked for a couple of days.

I hate being ring-naked. These rings are on me almost every day and night (except for that one morning I woke up and they were in the bed; I pray that I was having some sleep-walking divorce dream). I had to boil them recently because raw pie crust had embedded deep in the setting.

On the rare occasions the rings come off I stroke the spots where the rings usually are. It feels so odd, and so youthful and slim. Strangely, they also feel like the muscles under the ring have atrophied. 

So my ring fingers feel either 1) untouched by marriage or 2) deformed, like with foot-binding. Either way it isn't pleasant. 

Doris Do

I well remember the day that Mom and her friend/hairstylist Sherri cracked the code with Mom's baby-fine hair.

"We call it the 'Doris Day Do'," Mom said. "It takes a lot of hairspray. I can't do it myself, but Sherri will do it for me once a week."

It was somewhat like this:

... that's how it looked on Doris Day, anyway. This is how it looked on Mom (after a week of sleeping on it and a day of gardening):

It's coming apart a bit in her photo, but essentially it was a lot of hair teasing, especially at the crown, plus hairspray and bobby pins. It looked quite nice on her (photo above nonwithstanding).

Of course, only someone "lucky" enough to have baby-fine hair could make it defy gravity well enough to stay in an up-do for a solid week. You know Doris Day with her healthy hair sneezed once and it all sprang apart.

I have a definite bald spot now at my crown, and I have to use a lot of hairspray to arrange the strands so they cover my pasty white scalp.

I finally gave in and adopted my Mom's hairstyle. That's a turning point.

Now all I have to do is constantly keep my nose in the air, as in the photo above. It stretches the wattle.

Sheet Turnover

How often does a normal human buy sheets? I don’t think I’m normal.

No matter the thread count, a bottom sheet will only last me a year. And they always wear out in the same place. Evidently when I sleep I rub my heels into the sheet like I’m a giant cricket or something. There’s always a tear there after six months. I then sew up the tear, flip the sheet around to hide the tear, and start working on the new, fatal tear.

I have the solution, wearing socks to bed, but is this normal? I do not remember this level of sheet turnover in my past. 

 

How Did I Miss This Part 2: The Yippies

So, the Gore/Buckley documentary revealed to me that the Chicago Democratic convention riots were not right outside the convention hall, but in Grant Park, along Michigan Avenue, by the hotels where the conventioneers stayed. The actual convention was in the stockyards miles away.

”I didn't know that.” I thought, “Now I must research all the details exhaustively.” 

And here again, I take you in order through all the details I knew about the Chicago Democratic Convention to the main salient point that I did not know at all.

• The 68 Democratic convention was held in Chicago.
• Dan Rather was roughed up by security while reporting on the convention floor.
• Young people (Yippies) protesting the war rioted on the streets. 
• There was a trial later, and the leader of the rioters was bound and gagged during the trial.

Of course, looking at that list you can see there’s a lot I did not know. The salient point I didn’t know?

When arrested, the Yippies were charged with disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, and [SPOILERS] bringing a pig to Chicago.

I immediately Googled “Yippies Pig” and found a newspaper image of Chicago policeman, holding a pig. The caption was “Pig arrested.”

Again, how did I miss this? Was this information suppressed when I learned about the Chicago Seven (née Eight) in history class? Free yourself, click the link and read the story of Pigasus, nominee for President ’68.  

I had no idea that the Yippies led up to the convention by nominating a literal pig for president, and that their scheme to nominate a pig was discussed at their trial. I also had no idea that it was illegal to bring a pig to Chicago, unless you got a license and bribed the appropriate officials.

Also, search Google Images for "Pigasus arrested." I can't get you an image because Getty Images appears to own it. The better to SUPPRESS it. Pigasus in 2020!

 

Rocks

Here's a little detail of some landscaping I did in my front yard.

I want to curtail the creeping of the Creeping Jenny, so I'm testing to see if it can jump across rocks.

This will make my friends at TeddyJ laugh, because it's an obvious homage to the lovely landscaping at TeddyJ, shown here:

As always, don't be jealous of the rocks that I got.

Bath Face Done

Gary in Bath is as done as it is going to get.

From photo:

... to this:

... then this:

... and I'm stopping at this:

I'm done because it's going backward, and the glasses are all wrong now, and the lenses are two different sizes and yes, it's time for this one to just stop. Not a good experience. Instead of Gary making a humorous face next to a statue with a funny mouth, it's Gary with dead eyes next to a demon in Hell. I could chalk that one up as a study, and try again, but I don't think I will. Portraits are hard, and not satisfying at all.

Sheets

I was cleaning out my linen closet, and I found the light brown art nouveau patterned sheets that I used on my twin bed the one semester I spent away in college.

I have not used those sheets since 1981. The dorm bed was the last twin I was in until I got the guest room bed, and the old sheets do not match the guest room color scheme. 

What they did match, perfectly, were the wood closet doors in my WPA-built dorm room. And then I bought this Mucha poster, which I still have, and the whole room came together, as they say.

It was a heartless move, but after almost forty years I pitched the dorm room sheets, sad for the loss of my first independent attempt at decorating, and my first attempt at independence. Really, though, who has a sentimental attachment to sheets?

Electrical Outlets of the Semi-Rich and Almost Famous

In my teens I cleaned for some of the Saint Louis near-rich and near-famous. Not well-off enough to have both a staff and backup staff, but well off enough to hire our team of maids (who arrived in a Cadillac) when the housekeeper took vacation.

For the most part they weren't big names, more like people who had siblings who married into big names. Big enough names that I'm not naming them, for fear of some Saint Louis-style retribution.

All these tangentially influential people had two features in their homes I'd never seen in my middle-class world.

First, they all had carpeting so plush it was exhausting to vacuum. (An added vacuuming indignity: we were required to leave post-vacuum nap marks that were exactly parallel.)

Second, the rooms were large enough to require something I'd never seen elsewhere: electrical outlets engineered into the plush shag carpeting.

It made sense. Say you have a room with a huge bed positioned dramatically dead center, and the room is so large the bed is six feet from any wall. Where do you plug in your reading lamp? If you have one of these houses, the electric outlet is built in to the floor by your bed:

(I take it they never rearrange the furniture, given they'd have to rewire the house.)

Now, no doubt the fancy in-laws of the people I cleaned for had these brass outlets like the one above, with the protective doors. My clients had exposed metal outlets that were embedded 2 inches into the plush carpet, with the electrical fixture exposed to the carpet fibers and any potential bathroom floods.

You would think that you could trip on the tangle of lamp cords that made a nest around the embedded outlet.  We were always instructed to take up any slack by wrapping the cord around the base of the lamp, or humidifier, or whatever.

Since then, even though it was forty years ago, I feel deep middle-class shame when I see my lamp cords swing from tabletop to floor, touch the floor, then (the horror) arc up again to the wall outlet. I have an unreasonable connection between class and cords.

No contact with the floor and the cord! It’s tacky, and it’s dangerous. 

Does that seem rational? No. Still, it is why my tables look like this from above:

and this from below:

It makes me feel that if I can't have a lamp that plugs into the floor, I can at least have a table that plugs directly into the wall.

 

Comet Croissanterie

A few weeks ago, I found a day-old pastry on the break table at work. I ate it, because the diet I have stuck to for three years has been impossible to follow the last few months.

Even a day old it was the best pastry I have ever had. I immediately set out to find where it came from. One department-wide email later I found that it came from Comet Croissanterie and Creamery in Kirkwood. Take a normal pastry and make it more flaky and laminated, and then toast it or deep-fry it or something to make it extra-crispy. I became intent on having another, because this was no normal pastry.

Attempt 1: This place is in Kirkwood, and happily the next Saturday I was in Kirkwood picking someone up from the train station. I was early, and I set off to get to the Croissanterie on foot, but I realized I couldn't get there and back in time for the train.

Attempt 2: The next day, I had all but convinced Gary to go there, but then he balked at going to Kirkwood, 24 miles away.

Attempt 3: The next week I traveled there specifically, and I was three miles away when Siri alerted me they would be closing in two minutes. 48 miles round trip, no pastry.

Attempt 4: I looked up the closing hours (noon!), and got there at about 11:30. I walked up to the door! Victorious! Croissants would be mine! No! Door does not open! Door has this sign!

"Or until sold out." I suppose they've been selling out often enough they officially close an hour earlier and then sometimes even earlier than that. Another 48 miles wasted.

Attempt 5: The next day, Sunday, I was up at 6:45, dressed, ready to go, and Gary wheedled, "I can go with you if you wait." I gave him half an hour, and he was up and moving in time. So, 96 miles into this endeavor, I decided to given it another 48 and drive there one more time.

And they were there! And open! And we got one of everything:

(Not pictured: a breakfast sandwich and half of the work pastry, which ended up being an Almond Bear Claw, only served on weekends, which was a "croissant wrapped around homemade sweet almond paste." And deep fried or something, I don't know, it was heavenly. Also shown: some kind of off-the menu muffin, a croissant, a pain au chocolate, and a strawberry-rhubarb turnover.)

Two things on the web menu were not there: the cinnamon rolls and the biscuits and gravy, which astonishingly did not sell well. I would think if one were decadent enough to frequent a pastry shop, one would not draw the line at biscuits and gravy.

Perhaps because it was lamb gravy? Now I really want biscuits and lamb gravy.

Car Key

Last Wednesday I dawdled away my last fifteen minutes at work: went to the bathroom, checked in with friends, divvied up my hours worked and tracked them in the computer system. This is my daily Farewell To Work Dance. The last dance step is snagging my car key - and - I couldn't find it.

I assumed I had just done the car key snag early, so I retraced my steps: I checked my pockets, bathroom stall, friends, laptop bag - no key.

I had to assume I had dropped it in the parking garage that morning. And a Mini key lying next to a Mini car - who could resist that temptation? (Besides Gary - one time we were in a closed used-car lot and found a car key on the ground that did indeed open a nearby car.  We just sat in the car for a bit, and then returned the key through the service department drop-slot with a note that said the car cornered well.)

Since I imagined someone finding the key by the car then driving merrily away, my anxiety immediately bought a new car (fully electric). I didn't mourn the Mini for a minute. But before I contacted the authorities, or even went out to the parking garage to see the burnt rubber and tread marks leading away from my empty spot, I retraced all my steps from when I hit the building at nine in the morning.

I rounded the corner by the first room I'd been in that day and shouted, "OH. THANK. GOD." Because there was my car key, sitting calmly in the middle of the table. Electric car fantasies went dark when I saw my familiar key fob.

A friend within earshot called out, "Was that your car key?" 

I staggered out of the room, "IT HAS BEEN IN HERE SINCE NINE IN THE MORNING!" I said, aghast.

He replied, "Yeah, we wondered whose key it was."

I covered my car key with kisses and I've kept a close eye on it since.

 

Improvement: Interior

Someday I will have to update the interior of the house. The house is like me: even if I exercised and lost weight I would still be old and unattractive. Even if tried to update my house -- paint over the stenciling, remove the Waverly wallpaper -- it will still be an eighties house with a kitchen visible from the great room / beamed ceiling / fireplace. It would be like trying to update a house with a sunken living room: you’d always expect Mary Tyler Moore to wave at you through the kitchen pass-through.

Some maintenance needs to be done on the inside. In particular, I want another Toto toilet, so enamored am I of the first one. I am crushed every time Gary hogs our one Toto toilet and I have to do my business on the original crappy crapper. So low to the ground. Such tardy flushing. I barely feel human using it.

That does mean an update to our time capsule master bathroom - virginal and untouched this 30 years. Never been painted. Builder toilet and lighting and tile. I confess that a little bit of me feels that the whole house will collapse if we pull that thread.

 

 

Improvement: Side Yard

We are staying close to home again this vacation season, so that means we will again invest in home improvements instead of memories. The driveway absolutely needs to be resurfaced or replaced, and if I put in a large, slow-growing evergreen, a mugo pine perhaps, the front bed will be done.

The side yard and back yard also need to be attended to. I am at a loss on the side yard. We've had a side yard like our neighbors: a bed extending a few feet from the side of our house, only ours had the added attraction of a rotting wood border. 

I have been looking at a lot of Pinterest images of side yards. I do not need a spectacular side yard: just a place to keep peonies and flowering plants and one evergreen to cover up the spot where the hail dinged the siding. 

I want something between this, which everyone has:

and this Pinterest extravaganza:

Cleaning Regimen

My cleaning regimen is that I clean when people are coming over. There was a brief episode last week when we thought the tax preparer was coming by and I hurriedly cleaned the public spaces: the guest bathroom and the great room. 

However, yesterday I was in the non-guest bathroom, shaving my feet, as I do, and I was too enthusiastic with my pedicure and a bit of blood got on the floor. Wiping up the bit of blood set off a domino effect and half an hour later the bathroom was spotless. 

When Gary noticed the cleaning noises had stopped, he appeared in the bathroom doorway and asked. “Why are you cleaning? Is someone coming over?”

Sweater

I spied a young thin woman at work wearing a very eye-catching asymmetrical sweater. It had ME written all over it. (Or rather, unabridged, it had LOOK AT ME written all over it. The fringe, the asymmetry, the cowl neck were all designed to grab attention.)

I complimented her, and immediately stalked that sweater online. In a few hours I had found it, surprisingly in my size, in China, and I purchased for $13. I did not feel good about it.

I suspected I would never see my $13 or the sweater, and I got the email the next day saying they couldn't fill the order. Surprisingly, a few days later, I got my $13 back.

For a few days after that the sweater became my Idée Fixe. By the end of the week I had plans to buy it in a smaller size, locally sourced, then take it apart, make a larger pattern, reverse-engineer it out of t-shirt material, fringe the t-shirt material, and then add BEADS, yes thread BEADS through the fringe YES BEEADSSSS, and thankfully Amazon intervened and said, "Recommended for you!" They recommended The Sweater, from another source, and in my size. There it was. Well, still in China, that's where it was specifically, but eventually it was mine.

Strangely, the first day I wore it no one even looked at me, but a week later I tried again and three friends and a stranger complimented my new sweater. I suppose my air of "Screw you guys, I LIKE this sweater" helped me carry it off the second time around.

Spring Cleaning

I understand why people wait until spring to clean. Everything looks so filthy in the winter light anyway, so why bother? You clean, and then the sun shines a floodlight at floor level and every speck of dust casts a foot-long shadow.

But last week I was outside and the air was full of oxygen, and I thought, "I could go back home and clean." But I did not, because the sun was setting.

That made me wonder, what are the perfect conditions for spring cleaning?

1. Your house has to be reasonably clean already, because spring cleaning is devoted to crazy stuff like dusting the baseboards and door tops.
2. The house must be filled with spring sunlight, and ALL the interior lights must be on, the better to see the filth.
3. Daffodils must be up so you can place a vase of them on your table.
4. It cannot have rained in the last day, because wet footprints will mar your shiny floor.
5. No one can have mowed in the last day, again, because you don't want grass bits on your floor.
6. It cannot be too hot. Eighty degrees is too hot.
7. It has to be a weekend, because you won't get the full sun during work hours in the spring.

And of course, this is why I haven't done any spring cleaning for ...let me think ... five years.

Cookbook

So here is my 1,000+ page America's Test Kitchen Cookbook. (Sans dust jacket: dust jackets are bogus).

I went through the index and started putting post-its on all the pages that interested me.

I used up the entire pad.

I am very excited. 

Sin Upon Sin

8:45 am: apple for breakfast, because I am visiting the new Dapper Donut mini-donut franchise and I don't want to be hungry. Just one donut.

9:00: Minimum order of donuts is three. I order three. Gary balks at three. Gary overrides me and orders 24.

9:01: Three hot mini-donuts for brunch.

9:02: Eight hot mini-donuts for brunch.

12:00: All the leftover Chinese for lunch, because all the wicked foods need to be gone by tomorrow when the diet starts anew.

4:00: Hazelnut ice cream bar that's been in the freezer for months because Gary won't eat it.

5:30: One leftover slice of pizza that MyFitnessPal says is 490 calories, which seems steep, especially since we got the thin crust, St. Louisans that we are.

It is 10:19. I am going to go eat the last bit of garbage food that is floating around the house (a frozen Lindor truffle) and then go to bed and digest this 1,500 calories into the half a pound it is destined to be.

Progress of Bath Face

Here is where we last left the Face of Gary in the Roman Baths:

I scribbled away with the marine blue to get the values right.  This is how it looks now - his face needs to get a wash of pink so it isn't so blue:

His mouth still isn't right. He just looks cranky, not pulling a face like he is in the original photo below:

The statue's mouth is wrong as well. I think there needs to be a lot more shadow on the statue's upper lip and a shade more on Gary's.

I meant this one to be much looser, more alla prima, but it didn't happen. Since I did that one teacup value study it appears that I don’t move on until I get the darks right. So that means just like the teacups, it won’t really be right until the highlights go on, and that’s the last step.

George Bernard PShaw

What’s your opinion of George Bernard Shaw? My opinion just plummeted in half an hour last night.

Here's what happened. I thought of that line, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”

I reminded myself that George Bernard Shaw said that. Then I figuratively patted myself on the head for knowing that. Then I wondered, “What play is that from? Major Barbara? I bet it is. I’ll look that up.” 

Nope. It isn’t. I don’t know why I thought GBS said that: the Internet said definitively it was said first by Irina Dunn,  then made popular by Gloria Steinem. 

Annoyed, I wondered, “Why did I think that was Shaw? I suppose because he has strong female characters. You know, like how he was interested in phonetics, so he’s the guy who proposed you could use G-H-O-T-I to spell ‘fish’.”

Looked that up. Again, not George Bernard Shaw, but at least it’s often credited to him instead of its originator, Charles Ollier.

So, I had started the night thinking I knew five things about GBS: 1. Paired fish and bicycles (wrong), 2. Invented creative spelling of fish (wrong), 3. Wrote Pygmalion (confident about this one), 4. Wrote Major Barbara (checked and verified), 5. Wrote Passion, Poison and Petrifaction (hard to believe)

Back in my Senior year of high school, I told Mom I was going to be in a production of Passion, Poison and Petrifaction, a one-act play by George Bernard Shaw. It was a small role, the Landlady, but it was all written out phonetically so the cockney accent was easy. Here I am in costume in a typically awkward pose (I'm facing forward):

My prom date Virgil played Adolphus.

Mom cornered me after she saw our performance. “I thought you said George Bernard Shaw wrote that!”

“He did!”

“What, did he write it in junior high school? That play was awful.”

You can go here and judge for yourself.

Last night, because I was already questioning everything I thought I knew about GBS, I double-checked and he did indeed write it, as an adult, the same year he wrote Major Barbara. He wrote it to raise funds for charity, though, and dashed it off in a few weeks.

So, that is why my option of him took a nose-dive in one night. He isn’t responsible for two clever quotes I’d attributed to him, and I re-read the horrible P,P,&P play. Not the man I (erroneously) gave him credit for.

Crust, Continued

Of all the crusts I have made since my big crust breakthrough, I would say all told only 40 percent of them were good. Most were sandy, or tough, or tender to the point of dissolving. I just could not get a reliable result even though I felt the raw dough was consistently the same. 

This weekend, just when I was planning to make quiche, I watched America’s Test Kitchen and The Ladies were recommending we take a new approach to pie crust: a food processor.

”Done that,” I yawned, “and it was not good.” I am a purist.

I ignored the recipe until they grated some butter and froze it. 

I sat up. “What was that again?” It was almost like the frozen butter dots I wanted last year.

The Ladies explained that the way you you make this processor crust is that you combine two doughs: one for tenderness and stability and another for flake, instead of trying to make one crust that can do both and always erring to far on one side: too stable or too flaky. 

The next day I made two batches, one with unbleached flour and one with bleached, and the unbleached one was significantly easier to roll out, so it won.

Looookit. Yum.

Here you go. I really recommend you watch the episode of America’s Test Kitchen if you want the science and the The Ladies amusing commentary.

• Take 10 Tbls cold unsalted butter. Grate off 2 Tbls and freeze, then cube the rest.
• Weigh 3.75 oz all purpose unbleached flour and add 1 Tbls sugar and 1/2 tsp salt.
• Put the flour mixture in a food processor and pulse twice.
• Add cubed butter and process for about 30 seconds until it turns into a ball. 
• Take that ball out and break it into pieces and put them back around the blade.
• Sprinkle 2.5 oz flour on top and then pulse five times to make the dough incorporated and crumbled.
• Take the crumbly mixture, put it in a glass bowl, and add the shredded frozen butter.
• Stir in 2 Tbls ice water.
• Press the mix with a spatula to judge if it seems rollable or if it needs another tablespoon of water. If it does, add an extra 1-2 Tbls ice water.
• Make into a tight 5 inch disk, wrap in cellophane wrap and rest in fridge 2 hours (yes! surprising!) to 2 days.
• Sit the disc out for ten minutes, then roll it and put it in the pie pan.
• Rest in fridge 30min before baking at 350.

 

Latest Oil Painting

My latest painting attempt: I want to reproduce this photo of Gary in Bath:

So far, it looks like this:

They had to cozy up to go from the landscape photo to the square canvas. I sketched the outline in paint before I decided I might want to glaze instead of alla prima. Next step: I need to shade Gary's face.