Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

TWIL: Interior door locks

I complained about how Gary has twice burst into the bathroom while I was occupying it.

“Why don’t you lock the door?” he asked.

“Because I don’t expect my husband to charge about like an uncivilized animal,” I said. “Besides, that’s dangerous. I could fall and you couldn’t get to me if the door was locked.”

“That’s why there's a hole in the doorknob. Why do you think it’s there? Do you think it’s an airhole?” he guffawed. “You stick a long metal rod in there and the lock pops open.”

“Show me.”

An hour later, he admitted that perhaps he was wrong.

This merited dual searches on the Internet, each of us vying to find the answer first.

The hole does indeed let you open a locked door in that you can use microsurgery levels of lock picking as this man does, but most people just pop out the hinge pins and take the whole door off.

I also learned they make decorative finials for hinge pins. Purchased two, of course. Photos later. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 9/12

This week? Cartoon cat went from this:

... to this.

This is kind of nice, because there's no way things will line up.

TWIL: Shapes

Last week there was a NYT crossword clue: “Fast-food order that comes in four shapes: bells, balls, boots, and bow ties.”

I had “ggets” already, so that was easy: McNuggets. I had no idea they had anything but amorphous shapes. And now, after seeing what they consider “Boot, ball, and bell” I am not surprised they allow “bone” as an alternative to "bow tie". 

Here you can watch as Canadians make McNuggets and pronounce “process.” (At 1:40 you can see the pre-breaded shapes. Takes a bit to see bow ties, boots, etc.)

Weekly Paint Progress: 9/5

This week the Cat went from this:

... to this ...

When it was originally this:

And I feel that's it for the Cat, though I always think I can go back. (Related: If anyone was concerned that Mom's face was too grey in her final iteration, it was, and I gave her a pink wash so she no longer looks like a corpse.)

TWIL: Training wheels

I just told you about how I used training wheels to learn to ride a bike. Evidently training wheels are not the thing anymore. (Because they teach children that if you stop pedaling the bike will just naturally stop on its own and not crash into elderly gentlemen's backsides? I do not know.)

Instead, kids in this millennium use balance bikes. They claim to be superior to training wheels because they teach one how to avoid tipping over.

I haven’t seen any around the neighborhood, but I might not be paying attention. I vow to pay greater attention to children on bikes in the future.

Bike Lesson

(This is yet another installment in what seems to be a continuing series of Bad Dad stories.)

I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was six or seven. Dad taught me. This was his process.

1. Let child use training wheels for a week.  
2. Take child to the sidewalk at the top of a hill.
3. Take off training wheels. 
4. Run alongside child while holding on to her bike.
5. Let go of bike.
6. Shout encouragement as child bikes.
7. Watch in horror as child does not stop as she nears elderly couple walking slowly in her direct path.
8. Realize you have not taught child to use brakes, which on her bike requires pedaling backward, which is not intuitive and bad design.
9. LOOK AWAY as child stops the bike by riding her front wheel directly between the legs of the elderly gentleman who, thankfully, was facing away.

The elderly man claimed he was fine, only he did notice I was looking at Dad and Dad was still pointedly not looking at me. 

I did get a lesson in braking later that week.

Weekly Paint Progress: 8/29

This week The Cat went from this:

... to this.

Don't know why there's that stripe of gold under the ear on the right. And I'll probably knock some of the colors down.

And I need to see if Goldie's nose was really that crooked.

Telegram

So, I woke up this morning to a news item about how the founder of "Telegram" had been arrested.

"Telegram," I thought, "Why does that sound familiar?" Then I realized that I'd seen it on a list of searches that led people to my blog.

(I go there on occasion to see if people Google things that might be incriminating, like "Blog of my friend Ellen from work TeddyJ" or  "hot 70 year old men" or the classic, "toe porn".)

Telegram is number 10. Specifically "links for www.mocklog.com telegram happygrannypies"

Some notes.

Number 10: If "pies" means what I think it means there are no pies here, sorry to disappoint.

Number 10: Not a granny, but I realized recently that had I and all my descendants made poor choices at 15 I could have been a great-grandma today.

Number 10: Happygranny?  "Happy?' "No, not really." - Brief Encounter, favorite movie.

Number 4: This is no doubt disappointing to actual royal watchers.

That link at 10 takes me to a New Jersey trucking firm with a Russian word in its breadcrumb path. (The text at the top of a webpage that shows you how you navigated there.) 

I don't really know a thing about Telegram or what they're up to. It seems they're trying to tempt me to use their services to up my web hits, which I would hate to do. Think of the time involved in  responding to hundreds of comments. 

United Way Trivia

I went to the big United Way trivia with the Team That Won It All last year.

• We did not even come close to Winning It All this year. At the end, we were tied for seventh place out of 80 tables. I doubt we even made it to the top ten.
• We were down two key players: Mr. Friend 2 and Friend Anne. The Spawn of 2 were recruited to take his place, but we still missed his mental music catalog. We missed Anne’s refined palate during the popcorn/jellybean flavor identification category. 
• I particularly missed Friend Anne during the eating portion of the evening. I brought cookies that were almost universally ignored, even by a super special table visitor. (Friend 2 stepped up, tried my cookies, sacrificed her ketones, and praised them.)
• My cookies were lemon vanilla shortbread cookies. I figured I had to make them eventually after years of Gary commenting on my bathroom smells, with my reply, “How odd, my [poop]/[pee] usually smells like lemon vanilla shortbread cookies.”
• I brought another new face to the table: I brought a non-work friend. She fit in perfectly. All my other friends were charmed by her, particularly the super special table visitor. They had a nice chat.
• I almost can’t tell you who the super special table visitor was. I mean, I could link to numerous YouTube videos in which she represents TeddyJ in porcelain doll form. Because she is the Head Honcho. The Big Cheese. The Top Rung. 

I offered her a cookie and she declined, so that was a blow, but it was amazing to have her sit in with us for the first round.  

TWIL: Feral cats at Disney

Evidently a bunch of feral cats at Disneyland are boning away in Sleeping Beauty castle, making new feral cats, but Disney will not confirm the cats' purpose is to kill off rodents. (Mickey!)

It surprises me there isn't an equivalent cat bordello at Disneyworld, especially since Cinderella castle isn't mostly surrounded by water. 

 

Convention

Like everyone else I know, we ate up the Democratic political convention. 

• I did not share the love for the DJ playing the state songs during the roll call. Too loud! (Shakes cane at DJ, then offers him hard candy.) 
• I did share the love for the Joy theme. And for the narrative that Biden sacrificed for the country, though I suspect things did not go down that way. At all.  Joe's a fighter. Nancy Pelosi probably threatened him with a contested convention.
• That led me to research if there has ever actually been a brokered or contested convention, which brought me to this article, where I also read: 

"...,nominating conventions in the 19th century were very different from the versions Americans watch on TV today. Back then, the winning candidate didn’t give an acceptance speech or even necessarily attend the convention—an unofficial practice that ended with Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932."

It did not end with FDR. I distinctly remember the Clinton family on nominating night in 1992. He accepted the nomination after cameras followed them as they "shopped" at either Bloomindales or Macys. I think Hillary bought a scarf. The anchor (Tom Brokaw) commented that he failed to see the purpose of this charade, and how we still behaved as if the nomination was a surprise. 

Good convention in general. I missed the Walz speech, but that was it.

Weekly Paint Progress: 8/22

This week The Cat went from this:

... to this.

Might have gone for too much contrast on the face, maybe. 

TWIL: Popcorn ceilings

This week I learned that helium balloons and popcorn ceilings do not mix.

I didn't learn it by experience, happily, but, as I understand it, you will watch happy children's faces fall as the balloons rise up to their imminent destruction on the sharp texture. 

Groundhogs of Hell

I was out working in the garden and saw a hole in the dirt. 

Snake hole? I thought. No, too big. Moles? Voles? No, wait. Groundhog.

The groundhog appears to be widening its territory. There are four groundhog holes by the arbor in anticipation of some tasty fall flowers. But, this new hole was on the other side of the patio, in the daylilly garden.

I inspected the new hole. It looked normal, except around the edge of the hole there was some grey material, like cement dust left over from a project.  

Did I make a custom stepping stone here? I wondered. Or maybe it’s dirty Perlite from some old potted plant.

I crouched down. I reached out to touch it.

Then I realized: the groundhog had tunneled up through Dad’s cremated remains.  

 

Weekly Paint Progress; 8/15

This week The Cat went from this:

... to this.

Photoshop and the tracing projector for the iPhone have destroyed any faith in my drawing skills. (I have to buy a new projector for the new incompatible iPhone. This was done with old-school carbon paper.)

I admit the freehand version has more character. I am going to keep it off to the side and use it as the basis for version two because it seems all portraits of loved ones require two versions to get it right.

I thought I would use a palette knife instead of a brush so things don’t get overworked despite my best efforts.

TWIL: Cat Tooth Resorption

Is your elderly cat toothless?

If I see a snaggle-toothed cat I assume those teeth fell out, or were pulled out, or were left in some other cat's haunches.

In reality, those teeth might have "resorped", or just kind of sublimated out of existence. 

Poor kitties, with the vanishing teeth.

Flowers

I don't know why it delights me so when flowers bloom. I have done virtually nothing to bring that blossom into the world.

(You could compare it to equestrian sports in the Olympics: the human does not do the heavy lifting. (Or that's my gut reaction. I'm sure it's a sport, just ... is it an Olympic sport?))

So the arbor has held wisteria, tea roses, morning glories, trumpet vine, and now hyacinth bean. 

You go, independent little bean bloom. Don't get eaten by any elevated groundhogs.

Weekly Paint Progress: 8/8

Beloved Gary, beloved mom, you know who's next.

Cant't use the tracing device with the new phone yet, so I am just winging it.

I got the brow slants wrong, so he looks angrier than the photo. I might keep that.

In the lobby at the doctor's office last Friday

I am sad to say any active shooter training and SIMULATED gun fire excitement happened after we were there and gone.

TWIL: Spaceship colors

I previously used this blog to chastise NASA for painting its main fuel tank orange, but I was entirely wrong. That “O-ring orange” color is not paint, but the result of a lack of paint. 

Before you think, as I did, that it’s a “rusted metal orange,” it isn’t. It’s metal covered with orange spray-on insulation. 

Early space shuttles covered the orange insulation with white paint, but they stopped that because that amount of paint came to over 300 pounds. 

Here’s an interesting link, with photos, so you can see an even more lightweight banana-yellow coated spacecraft fuel tank.

 

UPDATED; Weekly Paint Progress: 8/1

This week Mom's Face on a Boat went from this:

... to this.

I saw it going south, so I stopped. I like this one.

Here's the original.

Well, of course now I hate it. Her nose is pointing straight ahead and there isn't enough definition on her cheek.

UPDATE;  I'm fixing that.

Now I like it ... only... It's overworked and it lost the looseness I had at the top of the post.

TWIL: Barron Trump's Height

I mean, I knew former president Trump's son was tall, but then I saw it all spelled out: six feet NINE inches tall. 

(He's yuuuge, no child has ever been that tall, the doctors, they don't believe it.)

Evidently he goes to university in the fall. I wonder if he'll behave, or become a liberal snowflake? 

Review: Challenger (second half)

I did in fact take a break from the Challenger book after reading the first half. I needed it.

I feel far too emotional about the space program, probably because it set off the loss of my home and family. (A pretty contractor encountered Jerry at his new NASA job and it was all over for the rest of us.) I still thought he worked there when Challenger exploded 1n 1986, but Jerry's only connection with Challenger was disrespecting the privacy of astronaut's families. 

So, I really can't give a fair review. It was really painful. Someone else might be more reasonable. Its not from any loyalty to NASA. This book hammers home the poor decisions on both sides. The Netflix documentary seemed to me to slant in favor of Thiokol. 

I think everyone who reads it will end up with the same thought: surely this will never happen again.

But, no.

You know how the Starliner spaceship made it to the Space Station  and is stuck there? Here's a quote from that article:

"Heat building up inside the thrusters may be causing Teflon seals to bulge, restricting the flow of propellant."

Seriously. Seals not working. If we find out the engineers complained about this for years, I will cry.

Weekly Paint Progress: 7/25

This week Moms Face on a Boat went from this:

… to this.

Just the nose left. And, compared to the original, the cheek's funny. And her jaw by her ear. And her temple. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 7/18

This week Mom's Face on a Boat went from this:

... to this.

I'm not unhappy with the shirt, but what has happened to her bottom lip? Has she had a stroke? 

Review: Challenger (First half)

This review of the Adam Higgenbotham's Challenger book resembles my junior high school book reviews in that I have only read half the book. I am taking a break so I can see if I can go on, because I am taking this book too much to heart.

That must be because I am NASA-adjacent. My father Jerry started there during Apollo 8  and left after Apollo 13. (That's why he was free to hang out on the beach in Galveston for three weeks: he was unemployed.)

Challenger, Chapter One: Actual explosion, seen through the eyes of the man narrating the flight. He was reciting the raw trajectory data from a screen, while the rest of the world was watching the Challenger spiral apart. So, setting the scene: oblivious NASA employee screws up.

"Well, fine," I thought. "Get the painful stuff out of the way." That's how I viewed the Netflix 2020 documentary Challenger, the Final Flight, I started with episode 3 (the explosion), then 2 then 4 then 1, because I didn't want them to manipulate me with rising tension. 

So, the book begins with Chapter One: Explosion. As I say, get the painful stuff out of the way.

Challenger, Chapter Two: Apollo One.

I am not kidding you. and from there we are led by the hand through every single NASA fatality. If it isn't a fatality, it's s screw-up, or you are falling love with one of the doomed shuttle crew.

So I'm halfway through, and I'm stopping. Just for a bit. It's just too disheartening. 

Ys are Back

About a week ago, my blog provider Typepad threw a banner across the top of the editor. It warned that some things might be a little unstable, and if we just patiently kept clearing the cache and refreshing our screens then it would eventually work out.  

That is not a normal message from your IT team. But, it was honest, and I like that.

I typed a few words and didn't see much wrong. Then I typed the word "May".

"Ma" came out. I thought part of my touchscreen was dead, because capital Y didn't work either. 

I just chose another word, and that was fine, until I had another word that really required a "y". 

I did the cache/refresh trick recommended on screen several times. Odd screen images began to show up after I refreshed.

I just typed in Word and did a copy / paste, and the next day the letter y was back. 

Still, strange. Not a normal error. Wh would that happen?

 

TWIL: William Faulkner wrote a very bad novel

I was looking up the "Caddy" reference in The Sound and The Fury, and found that I have only ever read the Benjy section, and I have been referencing it incorrectly for years.

I felt bad about that, until I discovered the existence of William Faulkner's sixth novel, Sanctuary, which was just a piece of trash he wrote for money.

Start here with Development and then read on to Reception. If you really want to be repelled, scroll up to the plot summary.  Bootlegging! Popeye! Corncobs! Paris! It sounds awful.

In high school they had me read A Rose for Emily, and my literature professor made us read The Bear with its six-page long sentence, and even they were so repelled by Sanctuary that they pretended it didn't exist.

Return of the Whistlepig

Gary recently reported that he saw a groundhog climb into a tree in the front yard.  

Groundhog. Per Wikipedia, you may know them as "chuck, wood-shock, groundpig, whistlepig, whistler, thickwood badger, Canada marmot, monax, moonack, weenusk, red monk, land beaver, and, among French Canadians in eastern Canada, siffleux." I can attest to whistlepig; I heard one whistling just that same evening.

I know them as the bastards who ate my morning glories one year. 

And I just spent this spring winding a hyacinth bean vine up my arbor. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 7/11

This week Mom's Face on a Boat went from this:

to this.

TWIL: Operation Fishbowl

Sure, the Russians bombed the atmosphere first, but certainly they couldn’t have compiled a table more horrifying than this one.

That table lists the horrors of Operation Fishbowl,  the early 60’s space bomb tests.  It is summarized below.

• Seriously, early 60s, as soon as people get into space, they say, “Hey, what would happen if we blew up space?” Or, "What would happen if the Russians blew up space?"
• Generally they detonated nukes in the upper atmosphere, but several times they attached the nuclear warheads to space rockets and detonated them in the clean, pure, unsullied space. Goodbye Telstar. Hello, space junk.
• Look at the empty “Fallout” column. They didn't even try to measure that.
• It blinded people. You know, like nuclear blasts do.
• The naming convention is to tack "Prime" on the end of a mission after the first one failed (blew up on the launch pad, blew UP the launch pad, etc.). There's a Triple Prime Bluegill mission. 

This was all classified when I was in school. Perhaps young folks today all know this. I only know it because the Washington Post carried an article on the Russians nuking space, and yesterday I read about people nuking the ocean floor. 

And you know as soon as we get to Mars, someone is nuking Mars, soon as they can.

Bear of 2024

Since the pandemic bears seem to have taken to roaming Saint Louis suburbs.  

Bear of 2020, Bruno, seventeen  miles away.

Bear of 2021, Brentwood Bear, twenty miles away.

However, there seemed to be no bears in 2022 or 2023, at least not reported here, unless you count Ben the escape artist bear at the zoo. 

Just this morning I thought, “Where are the bears,” and then on a post about a bear visitation to the recent summer camp hosted by the former lead singer of Barenaked Ladies, I saw this:

So there you are, Bear of 2024, Ballwin Bear, TEN miles away.

Weekly Paint Progress: 7/4

This week Mom’s Face on a Boat went from this:

... to this, because that drawing was messed up.

Now it’s just the eye on the left that's wonky. And too much hair top right. And the smile needs to be more angular on the left. And more jaw ... and ... and.

TWIL: Eye Exams Are Outdated

Gary and I recently had our eye exams, and I said to him after, "Why is the eye doctor still manually flipping the lenses and asking, 'Which is better, one, or two?'"

Gary laughed, and said, "What would they do instead?"

I said, "You would think they could do some kind of scan." Then I pantomimed a scan of an device moving over an eyeball, zooooop, zooooop, modem sounds. "Then it spits out a prescription." 

Turns out there are already machines that do exactly that, and some eye doctors are using them. Just not my eye doctor here in the midwest.

What about you? Is your eye doctor using the manual "Which is better" device or have they moved on?

Truth

Gary has decided that I love my rechargeable electric flyswatter so much that I also need a battery-operated one. 

I read the instructions for using the Black and Decker Battery-operated Bug Zapper. (I spend much of my time at work writing instructions, so I often take the time to skim them when they are provided. )

They say:

“There are two main methods for zapping flying insects. First, wait for insect to land on a flat surface and then slowly place the racquet grid over the insect and as it flies up it will enter the grid and get Zapped. Secondly, practice your forehand and backhand swings as you would a fly swatter for flying insects that are not landing. This is slightly more challenging but much more gratifying when you are successful.”

Weekly Paint Progress: 6/27

Mom on a Boat, take 2, just the face in four colors.

Forget about the last attempt. This is just mom’s face.

Review: Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar! By Handel, the man who brought you the Christmas classic The Messiah and its showstopper, the Hallelujah Chorus. I will refresh your memory. “King of kings, lord of lords, and He shall reign forever and ever, Hallelujah.”

How long should it take to sing those 14 words? An hour and a half? Because though technically it only takes about four minutes, that’s how long the Hallelujah Chorus seems to me. Maybe because I’m standing.

This opera did the same, took one phrase and sang it with every imaginable inflection and trill. If they sang everything just once this would be a twenty minute opera.  But, even at the expense of the plot and pacing, the singing was beautiful. I kept being astonished at how the men could hit soprano-level high notes, until I found that Ceasar, for example, was sung by a woman. In fact in the duets with Caesar and Cleopatra, they sounded like they shared a voice.

So, people in unison seemed to be a theme in the staging as well. Those identical soprano voices were in unison, but people also made odd hand gestures in unison. Think of an exaggerated version of the itsy-bitsy spider song when a mother and son discuss their shared desire to kill the villain. So that was a little perplexing. And they didn’t set it in Caesar’s day, of course. I thought the villain was dressed in a smoking jacket to evoke Hugh Hefner in the 70s, and the backup singers for Cleopatra were in some on-point 70’s disco attire, and there was one moment when the military goes into a Charlie’s Angels pose. Why? I do not know.

The set was a black and grey 1970s conference room. Why? Maybe to make me think of office politics? Actually, everything was black and grey, except for Cleopatra, who was gold, and the villain in red.  

So, I was distracted by the staging. Even amused at times.  I don’t think I was supposed to be amused. Still, the singing was so clear, pure, and challenging that it made up for anything else. 

And, sadly, that’s it for the 49th season of Opera in Saint Louis, cicadas and shaving cream and all. Next year, it’s the first opera my mom and I ever saw: Die Fledermaus, plus A Midsummer Night’s Dream as an opera, This House, and Don Pasquale.

This year was the best of all so far, I think. 

Pre Opera: Julius Caesar

I ordered white linen pants to wear to the opera because it is hot in Saint Louis. I ordered them well in advance. Do you know what showed up on the porch? A mechanical abrader. 

The UPS man who processed the return gently mocked me for suggesting robots never make mistakes. 

I returned the abrader for credit and ordered another pair of white pants. They have not yet arrived. If another abrader arrives then I will return them and encourage him to deride me.

======

We dined beforehand at Big Sky Cafe, where I again acted like a grownup and ordered a vodka gimlet. Then I tasted it and choked like a tween. Friend Anne tasted her cocktail and declared the bartender had a heavy hand. 

I then, and this is odd, drank water and the cocktail and I didn’t have to relieve my bladder for four (4) four hours. I’m a two-hour girl, tops. I’m off at the end of the week to get bladder botox to make my bladder stop spasming ... and maybe all I have to do is drink vodka gimlets to calm things down.

======

The vodka gimlet was probably helpful when I realized the seats behind us went to a young mother and her three daughters all under 10 years old. Surprisingly, they were quiet. I was going to compliment them after the opera until I saw all three were curled up in the seats, asleep. Did she sedate them? No idea. 

TWIL: Washer and Dryer in One.

I saw that there are now single appliances that wash your clothes and then switch to "drying" mode and dry your clothes, oh brave new world.

Or put another way, there are now single appliances that make it so you don't open your washer and discover the mildewed clothing you never put in the dryer last weekend.

I got all excited, and began planning some way I could off my 20-year-old washer and dryer in favor of one of these new conjoined creatures, but then remembered: whatever became of those combo refrigerators that switched to oven mode a few years back? 

I can’t find exactly what I pictured: A 40-degree box where you would put a raw casserole, which would act as a refrigerator umtil 5:30, and then it would begin heating up until the food was cooked, and the temperature would go down until it was a refrigerator for the leftovers again.

I did find this, which is the same concept only in the sous-vide form.

Of course, they all have the same curse: if your refrigerator/washer breaks, then your stove/dryer is out too. 

Nice to know about for when I am old and streamlined, though. 

Money Shot

I know I should have turned the phone sideways, but I was so astonished to actually see opossum babies, and then they crawled up on the Mom's back, just like the books say they do. Seriously, we have waited ten years for this shot.

Also it is remarkable to hear the insolent tone I take with my husband. At some point he starts mansplaining and I might as well just say "I am not listening to you."