Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Gary is Smarter than I, Yet Again

The time: 2:00 a.m.

The place: kitchen table

I am awakened by the sound of Gary cursing.

Get up, creep in the dark to the kitchen, where I discover Gary has knocked a dime off the table and does not see where it rolled.

He is cursing and searching the floor.

"I got this," I say. With that I get the flashlight, then, and this is genius, I descend the exposed basement steps until my eyes are level with the kitchen floor, and I start swinging the flashlight and scanning like I am looking for relics from the Titanic.

"Or we could do this," Gary says, and turns on the light, instantly revealing the dime.

Tonteen

It occurs to me that I have won the family tonteen, in that I have outlived every single relative, and now I have all their stuff.

(I haven't done this deliberately. People just die young in my family. Jerry at 48, Dad at 52, Dave at 62, Mom at 71.)

I sold Mom's house in 2022, and now the sale of Dave's house is creeping forward. 

But now there is an annoying snag with the sale. He got a home improvement loan, and while the bank told me it was fully paid off, the same bank now says it was not. I'm not too worried about it, but for some reason after slogging through almost two years of this. 

It just takes so much out of me, selling a house. I don't know how other people do it so carelessly.

Present Day

Twenty years ago, in 2004, I was working at Elliot and escorting my niece to trail rides and Cradle of Filth concerts.  I bought a new red Mini Cooper and discovered BNL. It feels like yesterday.

I suppose that twenty years from now, today will feel like just yesterday too. I hope so, anyway.

But as for present day, here I am, enjoying my 62nd birthday. I still like Mini Coopers, my niece, and BNL. In twenty years Gary will be 90, and I will be 82, so perhaps a self-driving Mini-Cooper will take us all to a BNL concert. 

Drug nonsense

Remember earlier this year, when I was so pleased with my new hands-off approach to health insurance? I just pointed out some anomalies to the people being paid and let them get to work on it.

One anomaly was that Gary was charged $5,000 for a procedure or drug that I could not identify. I think I decided it was the x-ray of his foot. 

So, when my latest mail-order pharmacy invoice came back with a credit of $5,000, I patted myself on the back. "There's that five grand," I thought, "See, you just have to be patient and everything gets sorted out."

Then the next day, I called the specialty pharmacy to refill my Mayzent prescription. 

The telephony system said, "Accredo is no longer your speciality pharmacy." Click. Call over.

"That was weird," I thought. I called back and heard the same thing.

Then began a long slog in which I data-mined through phone calls, emails, pharmacy web sites, work web sites. I tried changing to a different speciality pharmacy to see who barked. Finally, this seemed to be the trick: I contacted the prescribing doctor's office, they got on the case and got me back on the rolls, and painfully long story short, I get a new Accredo phone number and was all set up for a drug delivery on Monday.

Monday came and went. No drugs. 

I dropped my "Just be patient, they'll take care of it" stance. I was pretty short with them. I did use The Tone. 

Today at noon I will know if the impatient approach works better than the short-lived patient stance, because that's when the drugs should be here.

I am still proud that I ordered the meds when I had a week and a half left, not down to my last three. But that's about all I'm proud of.

Favorite attire

Remember when the pandemic started and we all started wearing soft pants? 

I did that. Sweat pants, pajama pants. 

And then I went softer. And shorter. And manlier.

I've been wearing the black pair of Gary's original Jockey brand boxer briefs detailed in this post. This post from, dare I say it, 2008. Sixteen years ago. They have a tiny hole where the inseam meets the Man Gusset. (I don't know what it's actually called.)

They are very comfortable and loose. I tell myself, "Because I'm actually wearing the black pair, I don't look like I'm running around in men's underwear." At times I forget I'm wearing them and I run out to the porch, or even the mailbox. And of course, the cunning crotch pocket can be used to hold the mail, if I so choose.

I tell myself the neighbors have no idea. And it makes me feel close to Gary. 

Rewriting the Novel: Tension

I seriously, truly, just made a new document called “Outline.doc” because I am back to square one.

Well, not really all the way back. It just became evident that tension was not building, it was starting and stalling and stopping and starting again. I made the outline to rearrange the first six chapters so her situation got progressively worse, instead of disaster followed by a little setback followed by tearful disappointment.

Hopefully, there’ll be some reason to turn the pages this way.

Rewriting the Novel: FIVE WORDS

So I've been been ignoring this novel for, what, a year? I decided it would be easier if I worked off my latest printout to make revisions. 

I completely forgot that sometime recently I decided to gut the first half. I went to make a revision in chapter three of the on-line copy and found that chapter three now says nothing but "Wait for Joe build tension."

That's it. And you know what I did after that? I dropped a thousand words out of the second half because evidently I like going backward.

Gratitude

I was feeling a little sad. My current wig is quite flattering, but essentially it is a big pile of nylon lies. 

I thought, "I suppose if I want to be honest all I can do is have a hair transplant." I surveyed my body for hairs and discovered, to my surprise, I have only one very small body hair area left. There is so little that, if transplanted, it could all be hidden by a small yarmulke.

I could have felt sorry for myself, but I looked closely and found I have no hair on my legs anywhere, toes to thighs. It was then I realized I have not shaved my legs for a decade. For this I am grateful. 

Vacation Accountability

I have been off work all week, and if things go well the next few days, I will have done all twenty tasks I set out for myself. Tasks included calling strangers and prodding lawyers and other things that require more heart than I usually have on a work day.

I still have two days to pull up 12 feet of landscaping cloth and recycle the cardboard we have been keeping in the great room so it doesn't get infested with cicadas. Even though both things need to happen during the cicada sleep window, I should be able to meet that goal. 

How should we celebrate the great cicada grounding? Shall we gather their little husks and have a bonfire? 

Aurora

I have one item on my bucket list. See the northern lights. 

When I heard about the solar storm I immediately set an alarm for 11 pm, as that was the expected time. Then I settled in and finished watching The Durrels in Corfu.

Damn Masterpiece Theater for sucking me in. I didn't check Facebook until after the (kind of tiresome) last episode, and then I saw post after post of the gorgeous aurora from all my local friends, even one who lives less than one mile away.

I ran outside. No lights in the sky. I ran back in and saw all those posts were dated an hour earlier. Under the belief that the light pollution was in the way, Gary and I drove down a terrifyingly dark road. Still no lights. 

Pouty, I returned home and looked at the Facebook comments. Over and over I read, "Oh, no, you can't see them with the naked eye, you have to look through your iPhone camera.”

Back outside, camera in hand, still no pretty pink and green lights. My “How to watch Northern lights” search said I needed to turn on night mode ... and that wasn’t available until the model after mine.

“Does this mean we still have to go to Iceland?” Gary grumbled. 

Well, yes, because even if I had been in the right place with the right phone, I don't think looking at a camera pointed at the northern lights is the same as seeing the northern lights.

Tornado

Usually I'm quite happy to live near the weather service office, because it makes the TV tornado maps easy to read. The center of the radar beacon is the weather office, which is just a few miles from my house as the crow flies, or, as the tornado spins.

Today, though, I did not appreciate being awakened by the tornado sirens at 4:26 am. The TV meteorologist said there was a tornado right over the weather service office, and the workers there were seeking shelter. It was a little alarming to picture the staff sounding the sirens and then running to their office basement, so I went to my basement too.

Turns out it was just a tiny tornado, didn't even touch down. And I don't mean to suggest the weather service office employees might have been a little excitable. I think Steve on Google maps said it best.

May Day

I was feeling old. I believe it was because I remembered driving with my Grandmother in her car, which was a '55 Nash Rambler. I was six. We were driving twenty miles an hour on Lindbergh Boulevard. We were not making any friends. I realized that few of my work colleagues would have driven in a car made before the sixties, if not the seventies.

Then I woke up today, saw it was May Day, then picked right up with "No work colleagues have danced around a Maypole." I use the words "Dance" and "Maypole" loosely; it was a tetherball pole taped up with crepe paper streamers, and we did not dance as much as plod.

I also feel old because Facebook keeps filling my feed with photos of Green Stamps and Mercurochrome, captioned "IF YOU REMEMBER THIS YOU ARE OLD."

And most of all, I feel old because I was all set to have someone fix my neurogenic bladder today, and now the insurance is stalling, and I am left with a sixty year old MS bladder and no clear path to even short-term improvement. 

I had even spent an evening talking Gary into supporting me. At least this time I knew he'd come around eventually, so I guess that's the wisdom that comes with age. 

White Sauce

I once heard someone defend middle-class casseroles, saying Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup was just pre-made Bechamel sauce. 

I thought of that last night when I made a fancy version of Pork Chops in Cream of Mushroom soup. 

I skimmed the recipe I found online.

I assembled my ingredients: pork chops, spices, portobello mushrooms, lah lah, and on and on, and of course Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup. 

I was about a half hour deep into making this when I read that I should set the soup aside. Why? It was there by the sink, still in its can.

To my horror I discovered that the sauce I'd stirred for ten minutes was a from-scratch version of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, not an augmentation to the recipe I grew up on. 

Verdict: I am looking forward to another serving, and I don't remember doing that with the Campbell's version. However, it took 45 minutes to make instead of five. 

Rewriting the Novel: I am Too Dumb To Write a Book

I got back up on the book pony yesterday. I had ignored a series of problems, and I was ready to take them on. 

Problems:

• Boring bit in which our heroine sends a telegram. I tweaked my interest by making the telegram agent more interesting. 
• Sad part in which she mourns her vanished husband. Moved an already written mourning from one spot to where I needed it.
• And finally, I had earlier taken the identical twin waitresses down to one waitress, because identical twins are a heavy-handed trope. Then I had the problem of how one waitress could cook and wait tables at the same time, and work from before sunup to after midnight. 

How? The logistics didn't work.

Raise your hand if you know.

Seriously, I pondered it ten minutes before I realized that I could go right back to my previous draft, two twins, and just make the twins not identical. Then, I could have two waitresses again with opposing personalities, instead of one very moody waitress. (Or I could keep her moody and have the other automatically adopt the opposite mood, the way I do, with no real feelings of her own. I might like that better.)

But why wouldn't that occur to me during the hour I spent boiling them down to one waitress? Or at least during one of the times I woke up and added something to my notes? Such an easy answer should have been staring at me. I do this when I'm programming too: just hammer out the first solution I think of, and then the second I'm done the obvious easy answer pops up. 

Now I'm excited again, anyway.

Trivia

I wasn't going to go to the Habitat for Humanity Trivia match, even though the core trivia team was going, but they sent out an extra plea the day before ... and I caved. 

I really thought I'd have a contretemps with Gary over it, but all he said was, "Don't forget your mask." 

And, it was lovely, just lovely, everyone was very funny and as I remembered. We did lose by one point. Well, one point would have tied us. And I did discover opera friend Anne knows all the Marvel movies, and I was able to contribute the decade in which Nelson Mandela died. 

And I feel fine. Well, fat from all the trivia food, even though I brought fresh fruit. 

Auspicious start. No more stepping out for a week and a half.

Fridge Drama

A few weeks ago I smelled a bad, bad smell from the Immortal Amana Garage Refrigerator/Freezer (IAGR/F). I tracked the smell to a veggie burger in the freezer. I threw it out and IAGR/F smelled fine.

Then the smell returned two days later. I wiped everything down. The smell was greatly reduced.

A week ago I put several frozen bagged items in the IAGR/F freezer. Sure enough, days later, smell was back, bags were puffed up. I thought I might wipe things down again, and I finally wondered "Why am  I wiping water out of my freezer?"

Yes. The IAGR/F seemed dead. It sounded dead. I mourned him briefly, until I thought to check the electrical outlet.

Also dead. 

Gary went to the basement and flipped (almost) all the switches, until he yelled up, "HEY WE DO HAVE THAT GFCI SHUTOFF THING IN THE BATHROOM MAYBE THAT'S WHAT'S WRONG."

I yelled down, "THAT THING IS JUST FOR THE BATHROOMS WHEN WATER GETS INTO THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS."

But of course, that was the problem. Gary had solved it and he strutted like a burly peacock all day. 

Usually we would have know the circuit needed to be reset because Gary would have used the blow dryer in his bathroom or I would have turned on the X-Ray illuminator in mine, but neither of those things happened in the weeks the power was off.

So now, I have ordered this lovely nightlight for the medical bathroom, and if the heartlight is off I will know to save the refrigerator.

Still don't know how the GFCI got thrown, we don't have the Christmas lights up.

Three Old Purses

Over 15 years ago, I bought a purse.

It must have been around the time that I comforted myself that I wasn't spending thousands on a purse. Just hundreds. "Well," I thought, "I will wear it for years, and it will all even out."

And, it did. It has just recently begun to show the slightest bit of wear on a knotted loop where the strap attaches.

If I were to trash it today, it would have evened out to about $15 per year. 

Sadly, this company doesn't sell this exact purse today. That's probably because when  you open the purse there are slots for multiple credit / id cards nestled in the center. You Kids Today with your iPhones and your Apple Pay. You don't want my card slots.

But I do. Therefore, thanks to Poshmark and eBay I now have more purses.

The two on the right aren't knock-offs: they changed the clasp because of the wear pattern, and you see the two newer ones attach with a lobster claw instead of the loop that wore out.

So that's another thirty years of purse there, each for an additional 60 bucks. Two bucks a year. Sweet.

And actually, I'm replacing that fragile loop on my original black purse with some braided craft leather, so I might not ever even need to use the two additional finds. I might die first. 

I do also have a big heavy classic Coach purse (too big!), Mom's wee little classic Coach purse (too small!), a satin evening clutch, a floral needlepoint purse with too-easy access, and of course the Big Rubber Chicken purse. 

So I am set for every eventuality when it comes to purses. Never buying a purse again. It feels good.

Two New Wigs

Wig One

This past month I considered exciting yet uncrowded places I might go when I inch out of the house. One of those places is a glass factory featuring demonstrations. I went a few decades ago. It wasn’t too hot for me and the MS, as I recall, but there was an open fire.

"Well damn," I thought, "I can't go. All my wigs are made of nylon and they would be ruined by the heat. Hmm. What I need is a human hair wig. But, I already feel guilty paying hundreds of dollars for a nylon wig: I cannot pay thousands of dollars for a human hair wig."

(And then, of course, I thought, "How hard is it to make a wig? I've reupholstered a loveseat. I've made cheese, I wove a basket, I sewed my wedding dress." Frankly, though, it sounds hard.)

Happily, there's a wide range of quality in human hair wigs, and there are even human hair wigs that are permanently one tenth the cost of higher-end human hair wigs. I found one that was the same as what one would pay for a synthetic nylon wig. 

So I got one. I needed I could go out to a bonfire, stick my head in an oven, or stand next to a glass blowing demonstration in this pre-permed human hair wig.

This one goes by simply "Hu-man."

Wig Two

This is another attempt at beachy waves. Unlike the long-gone Beachy Hiltler, it came with bangs.

I think i'll call this one FLOTUS, for First Lady Obama, who is about my age and was criticized for wearing bangs. 

Sous Vide Bacon

I've had my sous-vide for years, and I’ve always skipped the bacon recipe. I do like the idea of cooking bacon in bulk though. I’ll cook all the bacon at once in the oven. However, now I’m tired of the cleanup, so I thought I might give the sous-vide bacon recipe a shot.

Best thing? It said I could just chuck the bacon into the water still in the package. I love doing that with the pork tenderloin. 

The bacon cooked until the next morning when I noticed fat globules dancing about my sous vide water, and then I spotted the package seam that had opened up like the Deepwater Horizon.

I also read the ingredient list.

Sure. Bacon in STURDY plastic packaging. Now you tell me.

The bacon was still in the pack, just a bit soggy, so I just fished it out and started again with all the bacon sealed in a sous vide bag this time.

It never quite cooked, though. I decided that’s because I’d used thick-cut bacon. After  a day or so I gave up and fried it all up in a pan.

First bite of bacon? Gah. Hideous. 

I eventually realized that after the breach the bacon must have been simmering for hours in water infused with melted plastic. I suppose I should have thought of that, but I was so enchanted by the dancing fat globules I never considered the bacon.

I bought more bacon, thin bacon this time, and tried again the next day. This time the lean part darkened, and the fat part rendered, and then when I did the final "searing" step (often called "cooking the bacon") it all disintegrated into Baco-Os. Tasty, yes, but not really bacon. More uses, though. I'm throwing it in everything.

I’m sure next time I do it, it will be easy, clean, and painless. This time was a nightmare though. 

Books of My Youth

When you were a child, were there were books you never wanted to return to the library?

There were three books like that for me. I bought one of them a few years back, and I bought the other two tonight.

You Have to Draw the Line Somewhere. I was a repeat offender with this book. Checked it out, kept it for months, checked it out the next year, and so on, so much so that Mom almost bought the book for me on sale when the library cleaned out its shelves. That was the hardback, which today goes for 40 bucks, but I got the paperback for six a few years ago.

Wearable Art. I kept that one for a year, and it was the reason I surrendered my library card the first time. This was a gorgeous book with gorgeous clothing. Later it inspired me to sew a vest out of the scraps from my wedding dress.

Analog 9. This science fiction anthology had two unforgettable stories: The Gold at the Starbow's End and Answer "Affirmative" or "Negative".  The first one speculated what would happen if you gave scientists a lot of free time, and the other had a computer that recited poetry if you asked it to be more specific. 

I bought copies of Wearable Art  and Analog 9 last night. I do remember being a little disappointed when Adult Me read You Have to Draw the Line Somewhere. I am certain Wearable Art will NOT disappoint, and I can't wait to see what the other stories are in Analog 9.

I feel like I'm opening a retirement community for old friends.

Favorite Book

So I noticed that my favorite movie, Brief Encounter, and favorite book, Jane Eyre, share a similar theme of People In Love Not Having an Affair.

I know Brief Encounter appeals to me because the children are considered in the love triangle. Yet in Jane Eyre, the children are not a consideration: they get left behind. She chooses starvation over Adele, and then when Jane has money in the bank she abandons an entire classroom of children the minute she has her wind hallucination, utterly unaware that Bertha’s dead and there’s a crowd-pleasing ending waiting for her. 

So why does Jane Eyre get a pass? I suppose I must think natural-born children are the only ones who count. That’s peculiar given that my stepfather was the only father who counted. 

Or maybe I’m not as judgemental with fictional characters as I am with myself. That certainly makes sense.

Favorite Movie

Okay, Poor Things did jostle Brief Encounter off my Favorite Movie pedestal, but only briefly, and only because it features a brain-damaged woman with a funny walk who blurts out everything in her head. It was funny, but it was not the hilarious romp that is Brief Encounter.

Granted, many people think Brief Encounter is sad, but that’s because it is told from the point of view of the adults. They need to reboot that movie, make the children the focus, and call it Pantomime.

Because really, the kids are the driving force of the plot. Little girl Margaret keeps her parents together just because she exists. Could I do that? Evidently not.

And of course, thank God for that; I am ultimately thrilled Mummy got us a better Daddy.

Rewriting the Novel: Fresh Eyes

I think -- with all the rearranging and rethinking -- that it’s been at least a year that I’ve read the novel from start to finish. 

Oh my lord, people. So, so bad. Forget Anne Lamott and her “shitty first draft.” I’ve got a “shitty fifth draft.”

And it’s obvious stuff. The first line, the one that’s been re-written more than all the rest? 

It read:

The train engineer might have thrown the brake, but my body still moved full speed toward Oklahoma City. It didn’t feel like full speed; time slowed while I flew toward the seat back one row ahead.

I thought, “What? Why not just say ...”

The train engineer might have thrown the brake, but my body kept moving toward Oklahoma City. I felt like it took forever to slam into the next row of seats.

My plan for the day was to work on the new gap I have after the first plot point. I have to explore her feelings when her husband disappears. I was dreading writing new stuff. I might prefer it to re-writing old stuff.

I Return to the Guitar

Let us say that one can only play the guitar like a trained monkey, one has no ear, and no talent, but one has trained oneself to plink out tunes given sheet music without an excessive number of flats and sharps. 

How long would you say it would take that person to get back to that pitiful state, given they did not touch their guitar for one entire pandemic?

“No time at all,” you say, smugly. “Muscle memory does not go away.”

Okay, maybe, but you know what does go away? Knowing what each of the six (SIX!) strings is named. Then how to tune the guitar. Then picking out a basic scale by ear - no - by looking at a chart on the internet, then eventually by ear, then singing out each note as you play it. And then after that, re-learning the staff, and connecting that note on the staff with where that note is on the strings. 

Two hours and forty-five minutes later I was able to play the easiest song ever, David Bowie’s gift to beginners: Space Oddity. Ground Control to Major Tom, here is a song, put your helmet on ... to the tune of these two notes. 

After that, I was able to play Maggie May, and the song that does seem to be in my bones: Jupiter the Bringer of Jollity / I Vow to Thee My Country.  

So, it’s either sad it took me hours to get back, or it’s encouraging that it only took me hours to get back.

I Have Absolutely No Idea

Sometimes I get ideas for things to document on the blog, and I make a short post as a draft.

I composed this on Thursday night at 7:30.

This week I learned wayr painstkmg askew. As you do. There's no text in the post to give me any idea what I was thinking about.

What is particularly odd is that this post is dated at 7:30 on Thursday. At that moment I was remotely watching television with a friend. I watch on my iPad and talk with her on my phone. There's no way that I would switch away from my phone app to type. (If that's what you call that jumble of letters.)

I certainly hope I figure it out before the "This Week I Learned" post on Sunday.

Crows Volley in Response

The crows have rejected all the jewelry bits but for one: a silver ball. That one is gone. 

It was the biggest item in the trove I left last week. I imagine the crows looked at the little pins and staples and said, “Well at least this silver ball isn’t a choking hazard, I will take that.”

You can see their favorite below, right side.

This is the new set I have put in the tree. The bottom one is silver with rhinestones, for any crows with no taste. As for the other two, crows may end up worshipping the graven image of the silver bird and the bicycle may spur them on to make new crow technology. 

And, I know, I’m doing this backward. Humans give the food, crow give the trinkets. I am establishing myself in this relationship as the trinket bank. Totally possible the crows will say, “This crazy lonely human, trying to forge a relationship with crows for god’s sake, seems to have all the shiny objects a person could need.” However, a f riend reports a story of crows that began to “pay” a man by giving him actual folding money. That would be good.

UPDATE ===================

It has been one day and the bird and bike are gone. The crows caw, "Representational objects do not occur in nature! This is magic!"

Easy Diagnosis

I don't know if they still have this article available free, but I found this deep dive into a writer's medical diagnosis fascinating. That poor man.

I, on the other hand, had the most straightforward MS diagnosis ever. The gastroenterologist got it in two questions. "What are your symptoms / Do you have MS?" (No, I chirped.) There was a brief delay of a year of ruling things out before I discovered that I had answered that second question wrong. 

I am an easy diagnosis in general, even for buried psychological issues.  When I had trouble at work after Mom died, the work counselor got the answer in two questions too. “What are you working on when you start to cry at your desk? / What is an annuity?” At least that time I answered the second question correctly. (The answer was an annuity is an investment that pays out at death, with a death benefit, when you die, death, deaddeaddead, oh.)

The marriage counselor got it in one question. He looked at Gary’s grey hair, turned to me, and asked, “How old were you when your father abandoned you?”

So I’m easy, but I know that writer’s diagnosis journey is typical for most people with MS, with its dead ends and switchbacks. I know how lucky I am and how awful it must be to get sicker and sicker, usually because each specialist can’t see the big picture. 

How awful would it be to have lived fifty years earlier, with no treatments and no MRI? How lucky are we? How lucky will people be fifty years from now, when the first and only question will be, “Can you spit into this tube and wait for the AI to find the bad chromosomes?” It makes me want to follow the writer above until medical science catches up with him. 

Dishwasher

So we have a new dishwasher. I calculated that a dishwasher can cost almost three times as much as long as it lasts three times longer. (Twenty years, it claims.) I'm also happy to pay extra if it shuts off when water-in does not equal water-out; that way my wood kitchen floor will not warp for three months when the dishwasher floods. 

It is German and fussy and demanding. It requires a constant supply of salt to keep the water soft. (It did make me wonder if that was all my old dishwashers needed.) I watched as the installer added salt before he left, and then after his empty test run the display demanded "ADD SALT.'"

(Salt Vampire from Star Trek, young folks)

I ignored the salt message, because I was waiting to watch the auto-open feature in action. That is what sold me on this model. When the cycle is done, the door pops open invitingly. (This washer is German, fussy, and not yet in menopause.) 

I pictured it would promptly give a little sigh, and a pop, and then the door would be ajar, oh, half an inch. But no. After I waited for what seemed like twenty minutes, a robot arm inexorably pushed the door open three inches, and then the display continued to flash "AUTOOPEN" for another stretch while it vented all the steam. Then the door wouldn't detach from the robot arm. Eventually I hit some buttons and the display read "PULL DOOR OPEN," when it should have read  "YANK DOOR OPEN REALLY PUT YOUR WEIGHT INTO IT."

Everything was fine after that, only I did stand for five minutes with my hands full of dirty silverware because I forgot it had a super secret skinny upper drawer with slots for the cutlery instead of a basket. 

I loaded it, but I haven't run it again, but really it kind of scares me now. I don't yet have the rinse fluid it demands, and I know it's already pissed off about the salt.

Cooking Soup

I  assembled all the ingredients for my French Onion Soup before I began to cook. Broth, onions, butter, cheese. No bread: skipping the bread/crouton calories. 

It took me four hours. I had a recipe; I followed the recipe. Only, I didn't just cook the onions, I caramelized the onions. I added a taste of beef base so it was stronger. I added some dry brisket scraps from last week. I used sherry for half of the red wine. Okay, I didn’t follow the recipe. But I tasted everything as I went, and it was terrific. 

Then I noticed the Provolone was a funny beige color around the edges, but I just cut that off, as you do with cheese, and soldiered on. The recipe said to add Parmesan on top of the Provolone, which I did, and I broiled it, and let it cool, and tasted it.

The first bite was horrible. But it was all Parmesan. No problem. I pulled off the Parmesan layer. Still had the Provolone layer. 

Next bite. Still horrible. The Provolone was pre-pandemic Provolone. I didn't think cheese could go bad in the freezer, but it must have. That layer was peeled off.

The next bite was great. The balance of sweet and salty with the onions and the broth was perfect, as it had been when I tasted it. Then I hit a bit of brisket, and realized I hadn't tasted the brisket, and remembered -- too late -- that in my attempts last week to re-hydrate the dry slow-cooker brisket, I had added just a touch of Liquid Smoke to the water.  So now my manly smoky brisket was bathing in ladylike onion soup. 

"Not to worry!" I thought, "I will just buy some Gruyere cheese to replace the Provolone and that will be strong enough to match with the brisket!" 

No. No I won't. BECAUSE THERE'S A SHORTAGE OF GRUYERE CHEESE. (If you can even get real Gruyere, because evidently now the U.S. courts say that we can take any garbage and call it Gruyere.)

Gary says all soups need a day for the flavors to meld, so I still hold out hope.

Ancient Secrets Revealed: Part the Second

These are secrets I have kept from myself.  Things I have wondered about that have obvious answers I've recently realized. There have been two lately, both minor, but so long delayed that they qualify as self-held secrets.

TV Snow. I was afraid of the snow on the TV screen until I was a teenager. In that link I wonder why I was afraid of the static that filled the TV screen in the pre-cable days.

Now that I'm older, the answer is obvious. The only time I saw the snow at the end of the broadcast day was when I was up late. The broadcast day didn't end until midnight or one in the morning. And there was only one way I'd be up watching TV that late: my parents and brother weren't home. So the TV would keep me company until the broadcast shut off, and that meant I was utterly alone in the house. I got over it at eventually because the solitude that is terrifying at eleven is awesome when you're twelve. 

Promotions. I hate work promotions. I actively avoid them. I have a list of reasons: the new workload is never worth the money, the heightened expectations set you up for failure, and you replace a job you are good at with one you can't handle. 

Recently a well-meaning co-worker tried to convince me to ask for a promotion. As I was listing the reasons above, I realized the real reason. At its core, asking for a promotion is asking a man (usually) for money. And given that the Deadbeat father directly said I wasn't worth the hundred dollars a month I cost him, I don't like asking for more than the minimum. 

In a movie this self-revelation would lead to a montage of me confidently scaling the corporate ladder, but in reality that is not going to happen. 

=======

So, two mysteries solved. Nothing significant, just little nagging questions put to bed.

Wedding Ring

I took off my wedding ring at the beginning of the lockdown, because I had enough to worry about without the subliminal worry I would lose my ring. 

Now I find that I am called in to work, or need to visit the Department of Motor Vehicles, and I neglect to hunt down my ring and put it on. Out in the world without my magic token. No man has approached me. Well, one thing happened: I was talking to a man and mentioned Gary and he said, "Who's Gary" in a way that suggested he didn't think I was married (as I was so obviously thrilled to be talking to a man).

It seems people should be able to look at me and realize I'm married. You know, I bet women do, because of our refined feminine intuition.

I have a work event coming up; I suppose I need to see if the ring fits. 

Russian

It's amazing how few words I remember of my Pandemic Russian. Nyet, of course, and the words for "excuse me" and "thanks" and "hello".  But the word I remember best is pronounced chelovek (человек), or "person". I find that when I hear Russian on the television (most recently, Tetris and For All Mankind) I always have one ear cocked for chelovek.

Other than that, I can pick out the polite phrases from context clues (that tone when a conversation winds up is universal), but the rest is just a blur. 

It's a shame that I didn't stick with it. I could have more of a conversation in my high school Latin than I could in Russian. But, I tell myself, I grew some new neurons I can use as backup if I need them.

 

Thespians

I don't remember my induction into my high school Thespian Society as much as my initiation. All the potential members were required to go to the local mall and proclaim the first half of the Thespian motto: “Act well thy part” to strangers. If one of them replied with the second half: “There all the honor lies,” then you were in. (I believe in my case someone called a former member who came to the mall  and said the special phrase to us all.)

At the time my pitiful need for attention was not as fully developed as it is now, in my dotage, so this was a little more like hazing than initiation. But it was the 1970’s and hazing was actually encouraged, and there was no Stranger Danger, and there were still malls.

I believe it was in the 90’s when I was in a mall and I heard a rowdy bunch of high-schoolers bellow "ACT WELL THY PART" from the upper level. I waved madly from the level below and yelled back, "THERE ALL THE HONOR LIES!"  My God, the joy and applause I got back: I still remember it.

So, it was a thing in the 70's, and still in the 90's, but does it happen today? Chat GPT cagily says to ask the director of the local Thespian Society. I can't contact the director of the local Thespian society because I don't know them, of course. Do any of you know?

The Freedom of Chaos

My favorite time is when things tip from bad to intolerable. So bad it makes you laugh.

That is the current state of my house: intolerable. It was only bad this morning.

I’ve mentioned before how the house is in chaos because of the gypsum drywall dust and the mitigation attempts: HEPA shopvacs and air purifiers. And a new vacuum that was used one time before it was deemed inadequate. I am unable to hang my new curtains because they would be contaminated by the invisible dust still swirling through the air ducts. 

Then this morning one bathroom bulb out of three went out. The replacement wasn't quite the same shade of white. Usually, this would be unacceptable, but seriously, I thought, why am I trying for perfection? In Chaos Manor? 

And then, I walked in the snow by the peony bed and saw that I never did the fall peony cleanup. In fact, the withered stalks were still twisted in their peony cages. 

Usually, this would make me research worst-case scenarios (mutated peonies!), but all it did was tip the house situation from bad to intolerable. So I just laughed and shrugged it off. 

Victorian Wig

This is the current state of the Country-western Wig of my Youth.

I took thinning shears to it, and like it better piled up in my head, but it is still too much hair.

And, obviously, the artful curl is too artful. You can't look like, "Oh, dear, that curl has escaped me," when it's the same tousled curl day after day.

I was assured that after a year of wearing wigs I would stop feeling like I had too much hair. I have not made that transition, and it has been a year and a quarter.

That is why this week's list of to-dos starts with an appointment to go to the professional and have her thin things out.

My Dad / Good Behavior Review

Gary and I were just wasting part of my vacation by binge-watching Good Behavior again. It’s a show about ... I'd say fifty percent crime, fifty percent fraught family relationships. 

As we started watching, my own dead family filed into my subconscious like they were entering a green room, ready to come on stage. When a parole officer was introduced as a recurring character, my [step]Dad raised his hand and said, "I'm up."

"Oh, wow," I said to Gary. "I just remembered something about Dad, just out of nowhere. He was a parole officer for about six months. How weird. I forgot all about that until just now.”

“I don’t remember that,” Gary said.

“Before I met you, I think. And he didn't talk about it.”

“He didn't talk.”

“True. But he did say at the time that it made him realize my brother could have been worse than he was.”

That was the first episode. Then Dad went back to the green room of my subconscious until the series was almost over. There was a scene when lines were drawn about who is called “Mom” and who is not, and how parents can withdraw from their kids.

“Hey,” Subconscious Dad said. “Remember your wedding, when I made you clarify which father you wanted to walk you down the aisle?”

I did. At the time, Mom approached me and asked who got the honor, Dad or the Technical Father Jerry, who had recently surprised us all by being found alive after 15 years of silence.

”Are you insane?” I laughed. “Why would I want a stranger to walk me down the aisle?” 

Mom said, “Well, your Dad thought I should ask, just in case.”

So I had to have the awkward conversation with Dad in which I established that he was the One True Dad, no other Dads before him, and so on.

So, if you are looking for something to binge-watch, and you have finished both seasons of The Bear (fifty percent food, fifty percent fraught family relationships), then check out Good Behavior.

TWIL: Recycling

The boxes were still piling up in the garage a few days ago. Friend Anne said, "Why not just recycle them?"

"Well, our trash vendor doesn't have recycling service."

"Take them to the recycling center."

And it was then that I learned there are indeed centers where you can put your recycling, and one is absurdly close to me. I just needed to break down the boxes.

I broke down the boxes and it sparked one of the worst arguments of my marriage. Gary made many inaccurate points in his argument, one of which was ""Recycling Center' is just a fancy name for junkyard."

He claimed ... well, I won't go in to it, but after a bit of it I was seriously reconsidering my life choices. Figuring how many nights in a hotel I could get for my AA Gold status. Wondering why my husband was afraid to set foot in a junkyard. Then I remembered Big bad Leroy Brown and that there are dogs in junkyards, and I had a little sympathy.

A few hours later, and we spent all those hours arguing, we decided to drive to where we could see the Recycling Center and the vicious dog. 

This is the Recycling Center.

I want to go sleep at the recycling center, it is so clean and organized. And when it opens again I will be there with all my boxes and plastic.

UPDATED: What’s up with this?

Well, this was a surprise. My humble (but beloved) blog views spiked a few days ago.

From page views under 40 (each, as I say, treasured) to over 10k on a day I was writing about lip reading.

Other metrics (Google Analytics, Feedblitz) don't back this up. I’ve alerted Typepad that something must be wrong with their bean counters.

Or ... I suppose it could be a spam attack. I did notice I had a surprising number of Typepad followers who all hailed from Russia, none of them with a legit homepage. I deleted them. Perhaps I have angered Russian trolls? I can’t imagine. 

If the Russians are angry, high praise be unto Typepad for protecting me.

UPDATE ================

Typepad says that a server was failing. I suppose that means the page hits just kept trying and  bouncing and trying and bouncing. Supposedly today it will be fine.

Rewriting the Novel: In a Corner

My Plot and Structure book recommends you detail your plot on index cards, then shuffle the cards. Supposedly it makes you weave more surprises into your plot. 

I have inadvertently done this by chopping up my first half. Since I sent the oilman husband off one month early, this has happened:

His mental illness is more ambiguous, which better serves the plot. Well, in the first half. I haven't made it to the second half. It could be utterly trashed. 

There’s a lot more tension. You know she’s screwed, but she’s oblivious. Plus, her march toward disaster is a bit more her fault. It’s more interesting. 

You don’t get to know him as well, so you are as unaware as the heroine is as to why he left. 

It's a longer gap between when he leaves and when [Spoilers!] he returns, maybe long enough you are surprised.

Hah. Maybe he never returns. Maybe that would be better. I could do anything. 

Overexfoliance

I have gone all in on the Exfolikate exfoliant, even unto buying the three-part system with the cleanser, exfoliant, and ... moisturizer, I think?

What I have found is that while I could easily use the exfoliant, when I apply it after using the cleanser, Lord, it burns, it burns. Then  I apply the moisturizer, thinking that's the point of the moisturizer, to correct the burning, but it does not soothe me. Then I have red skin for days, with contrasting white eye sockets. (" Do not use near eyes" Kate says.) Yet I am so, so soft.