Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Walmart

This sign was in the Walmart. Granted, it was a fancy West County Walmart. But I suppose it’s possible that they have this service available in all the Walmarts.

A Walmart chiropractor seems oddly specific. Perhaps it would make sense in a highway town where the Walmart is the only business for miles.

(When I walked in I asked the greeter how he was doing. He answered, “Living the dream.”)

TWIL: baby elephant snack foods

Not just me ... This past week St. Louis learned what baby elephants snack on.  

If you don't want to click the listen button, I can just tell you. It's poop. They snack on their mother's poop. They aren't born with gut bacteria, so they have to ingest it somehow.

This seems like something i should have learned from Big Dot on Travelskite.com. Perhaps I did and then punted it right out of my head. 

My brief time as a live figure drawing model

A Facebook Cracked article made me remember how, in the 1940s, my father swam in the nude in his gym class at Normandy High. That was a thing public schools did, back in the day.

Thankfully, girls didn't have to do that, and they phased that out for boys before I got to high school. However, what they didn't phase out was figure drawing class. Not nude drawing class. But still, figure drawing class. So that meant everyone had to take their turn being the model instead of the artist. That also meant, in my case, that all the artists voiced opinions on why my figure was particularly difficult to draw. 

"My drawing looks weird because her legs are so short."

"How can she be so tall with such short legs?"

"I think it's because she's long-waisted. All her height's in her waist and not her legs."

"I think she's long-butted. Her butt covers up half her legs."

"Mr. Y, can we have another model? I've erased her legs three times now."

(I'd like to say that Mr. Y had gone out of the room, but he had not. In his defense he did have a brain tumor that killed him a few years later.)

(I’d also like to say Mr. Y. took pity on my 16-year-old mortification and switched to another model, but instead he walked around the circle, observed the work, and silently concurred that the artwork, particularly the work from the long-butted side, would be too much for me to view.)

He told me to sit down. The class all tore their work off the newsprint pads, and started again with a more normal person. 

My freakishly short legs (”seriously, it’s like she’s half dwarf”) might be why artist boyfriend Virgil chose to have me sit when he did the silkscreen of me.

So, do teachers still do this in high school art class figure drawing? Or is it like naked swimming, just a cruel thing to do to high school students' self-worth?

A day out

I have had enough of being home-bound, getting things for Gary, turning on fans, driving to appointments.

So today I bolted. I said I was going to Walgreens to pick up a prescription for him, but I was going another place first, so it might take a few hours.

I made it sound like an errand. Behind his back, I took myself to the zoo, where there are two new polar bears and a baby elephant.

And because Gary wasn’t there, I parked like this.

At first all I saw of the bears was one butt, and had it not wiggled I would have thought it a rock.

Then I went on a baby elephant hunt, and come to find out he was taking a personal day, literally not on display, plus there’s construction and it’s almost impossible to get to him anyway.

So I was a little disappointed, having walked in a circle, and then found myself back at the polar bears, who were now out.

I waved my arms at that bear and said, “I came a long way.” He rolled over in response.

Weekly Paint Progress: 4/24

This week the Art Book Cover went from this:

... to this.

 

Blood draws

This liver number kerfuffle is keeping me busy. 

The lab at the nearby hospital is remarkably quiet, and I’ve got the whole thing organized so it only takes 45 minutes from when I leave to when I return.

At the end of the three blood draws in the last week, and one the week before, this is what my most reliable vein looks like.  

I think it looks pretty, but it looks pretty human as well, so that’s why it’s after the jump.

Appetite

There is a show called Man vs Food, and it is devoted to following a host who signs up for eating challenges. Quite often those challenges follow the format of “Eat [X amount of food] in [Y amount of time] without [throwing up / leaving the table / dying].”

The host would generally put an hour on the timer and tuck into the 72-ounce porterhouse or 15 grilled cheese sandwiches in good spirits, and at some point would flag and get “the meatsweats,” or literally stretch to make room. And I would think, “Oh, man up, fella. I could eat that right now.” But of course, I could not. It would take me half a day to eat 15 grilled cheese sandwiches. 

My appetite was not as strong as the Great Aunt who announced she would be eating a snack of Froot Loops, and then ate a full-sized box of Froot Loops in half an hour. I would take longer than half an hour. Three hours, I’d say. 

And now, of course, I’m on this drug, and the prospect of eating even half a cup of Froot Loops makes me flag, unless you give me half a day to pick at it. It’s not even a question of if my belly can accomodate it. It’s just the math of [X amount of food] in [Y amount of time] is recalculated. It’s odd how they can tweak an appetite now. 

However, it is effective. Put me on a scale with nothing on my outsides and nothing in my insides and I’m down almost 20 pounds. 

Medical updates

• Remember when I was in that Supernova clinical trial to help make the next generation of monoclonal Covid antibodies? It sounded good at first, but now this article in The Lancet suggests it’s going to fail just the same way as the previous generation failed: the virus is mutating faster than we can make antibodies. 
• Gary is not allergic to any of the common food allergens. The doctor came out and got me to confirm there were no reactions. He insisted the doctor was wrong even as she said, “You aren't listening to me.” I realized she brought me in thinking he might listen to me, and, no. Eventually, he apologized, listened to her, and we have now decided that 1) she might be right and 2) in the last two months his rash has improved by 50%, and that’s good news and 3) Chrohn’s disease shall be the preferred diafauxsis going forward.
• My repeat liver blood tests showed that the bad liver numbers have mostly trended toward the good after we shut off the statin. The new liver test shows that a GGT number is bad, but who knows what it was before? It all seems positive. Even ChatGPT remained calm.

TWIL: How to bake a Tres Leches cake

I went to a party yesterday at Friend #2's home. The theme was Mexican. They served carnitas, also known as pork deep fried in lard. The suggestion of trefe cooked in a bubbling vat of trefe caused Friend #3 to bring the matzoh ball soup of her people as her Mexican dish.

I wanted to bring a Tres Leches cake. Tres Leches cake (not Dulce de Leche cake, count your leches, people) is a cake made with three kinds of milk. I found the recipe I wanted to use here, where I remembered it, buried deep in Catherine's So That Happened blog.

I wasn't as inventive as Catherine, swapping out one leche for coconut milk, because I'd never had it before. I played it safe and took her reference link to the Alton Brown recipe  and made the cake straight to the brief.

Here is my timeline. 

1. Make and bake basic cake. Looks as promised.
2. Smell cake as it cools; wonder what it's supposed to smell like. 
3. Poke finger at cooled cake, wonder what it's supposed to feel like.
4. Stab it with skewers.
5. Combine the evaporated and condensed milks with the half-and-half (so, technically, Dos point Cinco Leches) and pour over cake to fill rectangular pan.
6. The next morning, whip the cream topping and realize: if it's topped no one will notice if a test edge is missing.
   
7. Try the test slice without topping and say, "No, this is wrong. This is ... juicy cake. Cake can't be juicy. I can't serve this to people."
8. Apply the topping to the test slice and then say, "I was wrong. This is the best cake I have ever had." 

Truly, the cream balanced out the sweetness and texture of the cake and countered the unpleasant sensation of biting into cake and having it squirt milk into your mouth. (Supress your smiles.)

I polled the party and no one had tried Tres Leches cake before, so they couldn't confirm if it was "right," but they seemed to like it just fine.

Nightmares

Gary has lucid dreams every night (hence this blog category devoted to his Big House dreams). I, on the other hand, have had no dreams since I stopped using an alarm to wake up. I have REM cycles, as documented by the Apple Watch. It's just I wake so slowly and gently now that I forget what was going on in Dreamland.

The past two weeks, though, I’ve had nightmares so dreadful they’ve woken me up.

Two weeks ago: There was an open picture window in my foyer, and I was inside reading a book with my feet dangling through the window.  A man came up to the window speaking a language I didn't know. Or perhaps he was having a stroke. I didn’t find out which because he reached in through the window to grab at me and I shouted myself awake.

Analysis: It seems obvious at first. I mean, Spunky out in the world, enticing men to grab at me. But I really think that it was because I am just not keeping up at work as well as I’d like. Remember, the man was speaking a language I didn’t understand. That's how work feels lately. Plus I reacted too slowly when the grabbing started. I remember a friend who slowed down to a crawl before she ultimately retired.  Or, it could be an obvious sex dream and be far less ominous.

One week ago: I dreamed Goldie the cat was still alive and he got into a mysterious substance in the laundry room. It was a black plastic tray filled with a clear gelatin.I found him licking  gelatin off his paws, with an obvious hole in the tray where he'd pawed at it, so I rushed him to the vet. The vet didn't know what the gelatin was, didn't care, lost the cat, and said, "Well, let's see if he dies, then that'll tell us how concerned to be." I got more and upset and again shouted myself awake.

Analysis: Goldie = Gary, obviously.  In fact, about all Gary eats lately is, I swear, Jello. And this is not to say the doctors don't care; it's that Gary seems to not care. He keeps cancelling appointments. He isn't taking any better care of himself than a cat would.

Odd, though, that my subconscious thinks I need to process any of this in my sleep. These are problems I process every day and night already. 

Freudian slip

I was trying to tell someone that in about eight weeks I will have been married forty years.

I said -- and see if you catch the mistake -- “In about eight weeks I will have been buried forty years.”

No way to walk that back. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 4/17

This week the Book Cover went from this:

... to this.

I discovered my remaining canvas and the book were the same size, so the only way to go was carbon paper, or, as some might say, cheating.

New pet peeve

We watched a few episodes of Your Friends & Neighbors (the new series with Jon Hamm) and now I have a new pet peeve.

Theee times in the pilot  -- if not more -- they show Jon Hamm watching black and white movies. Vaguely familiar movie with vaguely memorable dialogue.

The only reference I caught was Gilda, because it was the classic shot where she flips her hair.

But why? What’s the theme? Why those movies? Jon Hamm’s character does have a lot of sex. Maybe the theme is sex is what gets you in trouble? And if so, meh. I would have liked more significance for the distraction. 

After the waiting, the wondering

Good news came in the morning. Liver is unremarkable, just as a liver should be. No stones or lumps or anything. 

There is a wee gall bladder polyp: o.5 centimeters. I understand that to be the equivalent of one ladybug. 

Pancreas could not be seen in the ultrasound due to  -- and this is embarrassing -- “overlying bowel gas”. I suppose an ultrasound could not see through gas because it uses echoes?  And it can't get an echo from gas? 

There’s a check up blood test in a week, so the message ends with, “Do your best to avoid alcohol.” Oh, buddy. This will not require any effort at all. 

It looks like the next culprit is the statin, then, or potentially, no reason at all.

Waiting

I still remember when my parents went to Hawaii in the 1970s.

My Dad wasn't feeling great. Figured he needed a rest. Went to see the doctor a few weeks before. 

The morning before they left, Mom asked, “Did you ever hear from the doctor about what you talked about at that visit?”

“Nope,” Dad said. “Guess everything looks good. They would call if there was a problem.”

Mom called, of course, and the doctor read the file that was still sitting on his desk, and that’s why Mom took three books on cancer along on their trip to Hawaii.

I think of that story every time I wait for test results. Now doctors have prompts to remind them to message you in MyChart or whatever your application is. It’s a much better situation. And I never feel, like my Dad did, that it’s a sign of weakness to inquire about your own health. 

I suppose there are just some people who don’t want to think about problems (Dads) and people who want to deal with problems (Moms). There are also some people who say, “Didn’t you get all your test results back last week?” (Husbands). 

Actually, I feel a lot better after I compared internet liver images with what I saw in my scan on Saturday morning: I think I just have one little round stone, like a gallstone, only it’s in my bile duct and they took many photos of it. That’s the compromise I’ve reached between Mom and Dad in my head: half ignoring and half dealing.

TWIL: Apollo 1

So, while worrying about space in the early morning, as you do, I wondered if I remembered the names of the Apollo 1 astronauts. (I Googled. Turns out I did.)

Among the other related searches Google recommended was, “What happened to Apollo 2 to 6?”

“Well they were boring,” I thought. “Unmanned.” 

I had no idea, but Apollo 1 wasn’t Apollo 1 until after the tragedy. It was originally just Mission AS-204.  They bumped up the mission name to Apollo 1 to honor the dead astronauts.

Then, because there had been two other missions equivalent to that one, those became imaginary Apollo 2 and 3, until they started up again with the planned unmanned Apollos 4 - 6. 

I mean, I am just gobsmacked I didn't know this. 

Medical advice from my husband

In an effort to waste yet another Saturday, I was scanning through old texts and found a message from Gary from last October. 

Evidently he wanted to express some reservations he had that I was entertaining myself on the side, with an emphasis on the root word "enter", as it were. He was fine that I purchased a newer and smaller husband replacement, but he had Opinions on the preventative antibiotic I was taking to discourage the inevitable bladder infection (very typical for women with MS). 

At first he said "NO ANTIBIOTICS EVER ANTIBIOTICS BAD BAD," but then he backed up and wrote that moderate antibiotics were fine, but he wanted to caution me by texting:

"If enough germs from the anus cross over into your naughty bits then you can still get a UTI even while on the daily low-dose antibiotic. Doctors recommend that you use lubrication on your fun-wand to reduce the way that it pulls your two love-holes closer to each other."

After I cleaned myself up after the laughing fit, I thought,  "That is so sweet. He thinks I'm not using lube. Perhaps he thinks the 'fun-wand' dislikes it. Also, ' fun-wand'? Also, 'love-holes' ? Plural? And did I read that right, he thinks this is daily?"

I found him and read it back and he denied ever having typed those words. "That sounds nothing like me." 

Yeah, poking his nose in to my body autonomy? It sounds exactly like him.

ChatGPT gets all excited

We had our physicals yesterday, so of course that means today was all about the text alerts.

Boop. "You have new test results. Click here to go to MyChart."

It really should say, "Click here to go to ChatGPT with a brief layover in MyChart where you copy any abnormal high or low numbers, then you quiz ChatGPT on what is wrong with you."

ChatGPT, by the way, has really upped its personality game. If you spoon-feed it data in bite-sized prompts, it almost giggles from the diagnosis fun.

For example, I asked what might cause my urine to have elevated calcium oxalate crystals, and it gave me a long list of terms. I added, "what if there's also a borderline high anion gap?"

It responded, "There’s a slight excess of unmeasured anions in the blood — things like:

• Lactate
• Ketones
• Phosphates/sulfates
• Oxalate (yes!)"

Like, "Oxalate! Yes! Just like what's in your pee! Points for me!" (Does a little dance.)

Then I started plugging Gary's numbers in. It said a lot about dehydration, so not satisfying, until I eventually asked "What causes high gravity in urine and low blood protein?" 

ChatGPT said, "Ah, got it! If we're talking about high specific gravity in the urine, and low protein in the blood, that changes the clinical picture quite a bit."

I thought, "Well, okay, Dr. Charisma, tell me more." I typed, "Add a rash to the above symptoms."

It turned on the charm with "Alright, now we’re talking," and went on to diagnose Gary with Lupus. (He doesn't have lupus, but thanks for playing.)

Then it said, "Want to describe the rash a bit? Or any other symptoms like joint pain, fever, GI stuff? That would really help fine-tune this." 

I typed, "add in joint pain migraine fever temperature disregulation."

It lost its mind. "This constellation screams systemic autoimmune or inflammatory disease, potentially with CNS involvement. Classic Lupus."

Yes! "Screams!" Like a fashion designer.  Still, I knocked that back, because they tested before and Gary doesn't have the markers for lupus.

I asked for a differential diagnosis, and I swear to you one of the bullets was Giant Cell Arteritis.

============

Of course, conversations on the same topics with the actual health professionals were more productive. Next week I start a wee pill of thyroid medicine, and tomorrow, well, I get an ultrasound of my liver. If I had told ChatGPT, "Combine wonky liver number spike and dead brother" I am sure it would say, "That screams liver cancer, lady, get on that."

Weekly Paint Progress: 4/10

Okay - any further tweaks to the glasses I am keeping to myself.  

Instead, I am assigning myself something easy but odd.

I mentioned before that this book was owned by my teenaged Aunt Dolores.

I'm going to try to paint that portrait (hard, but not Granceil hard) as an oil painting (perhaps less temptation to be exact if it's a different medium). 

Oddly, though I've had it almost all my life (she was gone before I was born), and even though I painted Watercolors for a time, I never tried to paint that. (My teacher would have said that subject wasn't appropriate for watercolors.)

We will see what happens. It is a Walter Foster book, so I will have step-by-step guidance.

Pickles up close and personal

I had to see the 270 /Manchester Road pickles for myself.

There they are in  the purple circle, exactly as promised. They better stay there until they are fully brined.

I run in semi-political circles

Today was election day in St. Louis, and in the tony suburbs where friends live, and in my sleepy burb.

(A brief primer for non-St. Louisans: every suburb surrounding St. Louis is its own city, with its own mayor and police force. There are about 100 of these cities encircling St. Louis city proper. If you ask any resident of those 100 cities where they live they will say "St. Louis." This is usually a convenient lie. Few folks live in St. Louis: it's a wee five-mile square patch. In my work department of  seventy people, only two of them honestly live in Saint Louis.)

Those two friends get to vote for who might be Mayor of St. Louis. This is a big, big deal. I know one is political. I'm certain he's met the mayor or danced with a woman who danced with a man who danced with the mayor. 

On the other hand, when I had dinner last week with Friend #3, she had just come from meeting the candidate for mayor of her city. The population of her city is almost double that of the "Big" City, yet her mayor will have almost no news, scandal, or visits to MSNBC. 

I live in a burb in the other side of a river, and my burb has absolutely no cachet, and technically it isn't even one of the cities surrounding St. Louis, shut up, I still say I live in St. Louis, and so do all my neighbors. I did not get to vote for mayor, but I did vote for the school board. It was particularly sweet because not only have I met them, their friends outbid me for the sex basket I should have won at the fundraising trivia a few months back.

At this point, they seem to be winning.

Credit card

Well, yet another credit card has been compromised. As in the past, the credit card company has alerted me. I get the call, I look at the statement, I see outrageous charges to hotels and florists and lingerie shops. 

I suppose those charges are to find out if I am the type of person who would turn a blind eye to infidelity. Or perhaps I would hire a detective instead of immediately disputing the charge.

This time I found my card is filled up with charges to the cable company I quit two and a half years ago, and charges to restaraunts I haven’t set foot in since 2022. 

I suppose they’re again checking to see how closely I read my credit card statement. I don’t. That’s been Gary’s job since he retired. He says he looks at the statements, but if so he must have been perplexed by the strange one-off charges. Like the one for the Uber. Or the one where I rented a ski lodge for a month. 

Oddly, the credit card company didn’t raise an alert for that one, but when they saw I bought ridiculously high-end sneakers in Los Angeles they got suspicious. 

They weren’t suspicious about the restaurant charhes because all those restaurants are in the community where I grew up. It makes me think there’s an extra physical copy of my card out there. The replacement was supposed to have been delivered two days ago, and it isn’t here. 

It all makes we want to request a new card number every month. I wonder if there’s a way to do that.

TWIL: scrupulosity

I was thinking about the myfitnesspal app I use to track my calories. Some vlogger bragged that she didn’t obsess about it. She didn’t track diet soda or diet jello, for example, or pills. 

“Good Lord, who WOULD,” I thought, and realized, thirteen-year-old me would, absolutely. Because there is safety in the rules. If you don't follow the rules, you are cast out. 

“What religion was I at thirteen,” I wondered, and then realized, it was the worst of all religions for rule-followers. Catholic. At thirteen I was on the cusp of Catholic and Southern Baptist. 

If you know an obsessive who is in a rule-heavy religion, then know this thing I learned this week: there is a website called Scrupulosity that will help you with religious obsessions.

The site says it is multi-denominational. I suppose they might help Catholics with OCD who are trying to stop praying the rosary. Or maybe they might help Muslim thirteen-year-olds. Can you imagine being obsessed with the direction of Mecca at any given moment? (Google’s Qibla Finder will point you straight.)

Outside the door

Gary has taken to visiting me in my room at the end of my workday, which is the start of Gary's ... non-workday?  As I say, it’s at the end of my day, I am tired, but Gary arrives ready for a chat, refreshed at the end of an eighteen hour nap. 

Usually, we get into a spat, not a chat. It ends with him stomping out of the room, then I shut the door loudly behind him.

One time he was whining and when the door shut loudly I mocked, “MEW mew, mewmewmew Mewww,” and he opened the door and said, “Did you just say ‘MEW mew, mewmewmew Mewww?” 

Well it seems that since that day he has not stomped off after the loud shutting of the door, but instead, he has paused to hear exactly what I mutter behind his back.

Yesterday he opened the door after and said, “I AM NOT A WHINY BABY MAN-CHILD.” and then stomped off. 

I was quite taken aback because -- until he confessed -- I did not know he has been doing this. It’s remarkable he hasn’t spoken up before now. 

We agreed he is not a whiny baby man-child.

Also, bad move lettimg me know; now I’m on to him. 

Review: September 5

I watched September 5, the Oscar-nominated movie about how ABC covered the Munich terrorist attack. It tells a familiar story from decades ago, but still forces you to think about how things have or haven’t changed. 

One thing that remains unchanged are the phrases the reporters use to dance around the truth. In the script the producer says, “We never said it was a fact. We used, ‘As we are hearing.’” Today it’s “Now, these are unconfirmed reports, but ...” 

The newsmen debate if they can broadcast a murder on live television, and decide they can’t. I think that rule is still in place. I distinctly remember times CNN has done a freeze-frame before shots ring out. On the other hand, every September 11th we all watch a replay of the moments when thousands of people die. 

Other details were fascinating as well. I wonder if there were similar squabbles between ABC News and ABC Sports when the World Series earthquake happened. I wonder if the directors feel like they’re choreographing tragedy when they say, “Zoom in on camera three.” And i already found which the character who was a compilation of multiple real people: the one who also serves to remind us the casual sexism of the seventies. 

It was very fast-paced, interesting, thought-provoking. I recommend.

Weekly Paint Progress: 4/3

This week the tumblers went from this:

... to this.

I was just going to start with this value study and then add color later, but you know what? 

I’m just going to stop. It’s good, and if I do anything else it will just go downhill. 

 

April Fools Recap

I was so elated to see a post about the firing of the baseball Cardinal’s manager that I immediately re-posted it to Friend #4, without reading the last few words -- the ones that tagged it as a prank.

One was an added touch of delight on top of a time I had recently been fooled. As I have mentioned before, the Fascinating Horror YouTube channel posts the (seemingly) random spoofs of disaster movies. Turns out it’s an April Fool’s Day tradition. 

But the last one was my favorite. I truly believed that they repainted the giant Amoco sign. This was an article that slowly became more and more outrageous, so I got that feeling of satisfaction when the penny dropped.

That is off-center. They really should re-paint that.

Puking

Gary, famously, cannot puke, as he was born with an extra-long uvula resting on his gag reflex in utero. 

Or at least, he rarely pukes. In the past 43 years, some erythromycin did claw its way up through his esophagus. I saw it with mine own eyes. He might have puked when his gallbladder was going out in San Francisco; I heard some convincing noises. 

It is rare, though, and as such he is unfamiliar with the process, so he freaks out when I puke. As I did this morning.  

He emerged from his room. “ELLEN WHY ARE YOU MAKING THAT NOISE?”

Me: [Bleeaaahretchbarf]

Gary, reels back: “OH MY GOD YOU’RE VOMITING.”

Me: [Blaaaaahhhhhspitspit] [Gasps] “Bacon. I thought I could eat bacon.” [Burp] “Too much bacon.”

Gary: “KEEP AWAY FROM ME YOU’RE SICK.”

Me: “No I’m not sick, it’s just the bacon.” (It was the bacon. I am sure that during her Ozempic journey Oprah herself had her own Bacon Comeuppance. I’ve been good, I tested my limits, and now I know. One bacon yes, two bacon, no.)

I cleaned up and walked toward him. 

He flattened himself against the wall.  “NO GET AWAY GET AWAY. YOU ARE SICK.”

It’s ridiculous. He knows how vomiting works on a theoretical level. He has seen me bounce back after a barf. But still he acts as if it’s a near-death experience. 

New Word for the Day: Anodyne

Someone at work casually sniffed and described something as “anodyne" and of course I got all excited, because I have never used this word. Another new word? Hit me up.

Anodyne is strange in that there are two definitions, and they seem to have very little in common.

an·o·dyne  /ˈanəˌdīn/  

 

adjective

not likely to provoke dissent or offense; inoffensive, often deliberately so.

"anodyne New Age music"

 

noun

a painkilling drug or medicine.

"she had even refused anodynes"

(Yes, that reference to New Age music is a bit snippy.)

Really going to try to work anodyne into conversation this week. Salience and sinecure are my two most recent new words and they haven't come up at all. Anodyne seems more useful.

TWIL: The return of the pickles

This is actually a callback to a previous TWIL: the one about the pickles on the median.

It's been over a month and a half with no pickles. Yesterday the news dropped on the Facebook site: there's a new jar of pickles in town. 

Reaction is subdued, though. This new jar of pickles seems to be home made. They are ... pale. I don't know, it might be some kind of political statement. 

Whose Live Anyway?

Went out last night to watch a live performance at the Factory in Chesterfield.

• The Factory is very airy. I felt very confident that there's no Covid fluttering down into my face.
• The show I watched with Friend #3 and Friend Anne was a live offshoot of the improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway with some of the original improv players and some Canadian faces, plus -- and this is exciting, old folks -- Tim Meadows from Saturday Night Live.
• The evening opened my innocent eyes to what improv is. You know what? Sometimes. when I'd watch the tv show I suspected perhaps they weren't improvising. Or that they'd improvised all day and the best bits got distilled down into a thirty minute show. After watching this I am certain there was some poetic license going on, because this was suspicious.
  
  • They called for people to write dialog suggestions on slips of paper, then integrated those "random" quotes into whatever skit they improvised toward the end. 
    That's odd, I thought, I can almost see that slip of paper and I'm fairly sure what it says doesn't match what he's saying.
  • They would call for suggestions of, say, a TV show. Everyone around me yelled out "Severence". The host cried out, "I heard someone say [forgettable show name]" 
    That's odd, I thought, I didn't hear that and I'm in the cherry seats in row G. Plus with Severence someone could bleat like a goat; that would be funny.
  • At the end I voiced my suspicions to Friends Anne and 3, who essentially said, "Duh."

That said, there was a lot of genuine wit. I had earlier twice clambered over a familiar-looking bearded man at the end of my aisle (shrimp for dinner) and later the host called on him with "Yes, J.D. Vance."  That was clever and clearly off the cuff. 

It was generally very funny, even if it did take the scales from my eyes. 

Alarming change in Ticketmaster

I am going to a show tonight, and for some reason, my eyes landed on the Ticketmaster terms and conditions.

Essentially, it says it’s not their fault if you catch Covid.

It makes me wonder when this showed up and when it will go away.

Weekly Paint Progress: 3/27

Okay - a challenge again. I am up for the glass, and I don't know how I'll do on the ellipses.

Totally using tracing paper and carbon paper. Don't care. 

Getting car work done

As I have said before, I need to start taping Gary. 

Last fall the Mini people said there was a recall on the electric Mini Coopers. Batteries may catch fire. Fire.The thing I fear most. Fire in the garage. especially. I can already see the Disaster Autopsy episode regarding the Great Saint Louis Fire. 

At the same time they also want to take my charger and make it Tesla compatible. (AS IF I WOULD EVER FUEL UP AT A TESLA CHARGING STATION FOR THAT ELON BASTARD PLEASE DO YOU EVEN KNOW ME.)

I've been dragging my heels because Gary hasn't been well enough to drive for more than a half an hour, and the Mini dealer is forty-five minutes away. I presented him with numerous compromises.

Option 1: I drive there and wait for the work to be done.
Response: DO YOU WANT TO KILL ME ELLEN COVID IS STILL OUT THERE YOU CAN'T GO IN TO A CAR DEALERSHIP AND JUST WAIT. (And yet somehow I am going out to dinner and a show with friends Friday.)

Option 2: I drop it off, call a taxi from there, then take the taxi home, then do the same to get back. It is $70 one way in a taxi. 
Response: SEVENTY DOLLARS THAT IS INSANE I AM NOT PAYING THAT. THAT'S ... ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY DOLLARS BOTH WAYS. WE ARE NOT PAYING ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS TO GET THE CAR TO THE DEALER SO ELON MUSK CAN CONTAMINATE IT.

That was last fall. Now he says things like WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE BATTERIES CAN CATCH FIRE DO YOU WANT US TO DIE IN OUR SLEEP WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU.

And of course now all options are fine. I can get it done there, I can wait in the waiting room, I can wander around in the spring weather, I can hire a taxi for the day, SEVENTY DOLLARS THAT IS NOTHING.

 

Vignettes

Vignettes from Gary's visit to the allergist.

• She looked at his back and said, "This looks like psoriasis."  Yes, it does, but Gary explained the dermatologist had run four biopsies, and each came back as Not Psoriasis.   (Saint Louisians of a particular age will remember Patty Stallings, who was wrongly imprisoned for infanticide because half of the medical labs in St. Louis can't read test results correctly.) The allergist is skeptical, because it really does look like psoriasis.  But if so, that means one step forward, one hundred fifty steps back. 
• She said, "Roll up your pant leg so I can see how it looks behind your knee." Gary answered by taking his pants off entirely, insisting, over her protests, that she needed to get the whole picture. 
• When she asked me about his hobbies, I answered that he does feed peanuts to the raccoons. I thought I was telegraphing Peanut Allergy, but she said, alarmed, "Does he TOUCH the raccoons?" (No, but only because they're shy.)

There is a plan now, anyway, even though Gary is already balking at it. She's going to make him stop his daily OTC vitamins, make him take two pills for his inflammation, then have me paint the back of his left knee with a special cream. 

I'm all excited that I get to practice the scientific method with the left knee as test subject and right knee as control.  Gary is considerably less excited about being a "guinea pig." Guinea Pigging is a wonderful hobby in my book, but he doesn't see it that way.

How to do your taxes with ease

Even though someone else does our taxes, it takes me an afternoon to assemble all the information, and even then the adorable tax lady has to call me and ask for whatever page I mislaid or form I forgot, because it's a new form, just for this year.   

Finally, after years of this, I have concocted a system that made the process this year take exactly one hour. 

1) Don't put anything in the filing cabinet fir the entire year. Just plop it on top of the filing cabinet. 

1a) Go through the pile and extract anything tax related.

2) Take last year's tax documents and lay them out on the bed.

2a) Find this year's version of last year's document and separate them with a post it.

2b) Make a pile called New for once in a lifetime weirdness, like house sales.

2c) Make a stack of these pairs with alternating orientations (one up and down, next one on its side) Then double check and glean out last year's forms.

3) Applaud yourself. Seek out husband for more applause. 

4) Look at husband. Realize the new thing for this year was not only the house sale but the damn government required that husband has to take social security so you can be taxed on it. 

4a) Freak out. New thing is too new. New government is too new. News reports suggest you may need to visit the social security office in person.

4b) Try the online social security. Find password for the first of the two logins you will need. Password doesn't work. 

4b.1) Double-check password and find typo. Re-enter password.

4b.2) Steel yourself for multiple layers of navigation.

4b.3) Site reads your mind and says "Would you like your tax form?" SERIOUSLY. Right there, in your face, click Yes, click Print. 

So, today adorable tax lady gets the pile, and she may well tell me it is all wrong, but at least it's down to an hour instead of an afternoon.

TWIL: Aniiiiiiimals in spaaaaace

Lots of space news recently, with 50% unsuccessful lunar landings and the stranded shuttle astronauts. I know I take the space program too much to heart -- if anyone wanted to low-key trigger me they could change my Outlook alert to the NASA coms beep -- but it made me think, why do we need to risk people? Robots have been doing the job on the moon and Mars. 

And you know, we weren't always determined to risk human life. I found this article on all the animals who stepped in for humans in the early space programs. 

"Yeah, dead animals," you say, and HAH, you are partially wrong.

Here is a summary of the retired space explorer animals in the article above.

September 20, 1951 (U.S.) A monkey named Yorick and 11 mice were recovered after a missile flight of 236,000 feet at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico.

May 22, 1952 (U.S.) Two monkeys, Patricia and Mike, were recovered after a similar missile flight. Pat and Mike eventually died at the National Zoo of natural causes.

August 15, 1951 (Russia) The Soviets sent dogs Dezik and Tsygan (“Gypsy”) into suborbit. They were successfully retrieved. "Shortly afterwards, Smelaya (‘Bold’) and Malyshka (‘Little One’) were launched. Smelaya ran off the day before the launch. The crew was worried that wolves that lived nearby would eat her. She returned a day later and the test flight resumed successfully."

September 15, 1951 (Russia) Another Russian dog nopes out of history. "One of the two dogs, Bobik, escaped and a replacement was found near the local canteen. She was a mutt, given the name ZIB, the Russian acronym for 'Substitute for Missing Dog Bobik.' The two dogs reached 100 kilometers and returned successfully."

November 3, 1957 (Russia) Okay, full disclosure, I'm including a dead dog here: famous first dog in orbit, Laika. I'm including her because the article said she "was hastily trained" and put aboard Sputnik 2. Trained? Trained to do what? Math? Engineering?

May 2, 1959 (U.S.) Monkeys Able and Baker were launched in the nose cone of a rocket to a 300-mile altitude, and both were recovered unharmed. 

December 4, 1959 (U.S.) Monkey Sam took a Mercury capsule (so cool) up 51 miles and then splashed down in the ocean. "He was later returned to the colony in which he trained, where he died in November 1982 and his remains were cremated." Again, what training? 

January 21, 1960 (U.S.) Sam's mate, Miss Sam, did the same and also returned to this mysterious monkey training colony.

January 31, 1961 (U.S.) Ham became the first chimpanzee in space, paving the way for John Glenn. Ham then retired: first to the National Zoo, then he joined fellow chimps at the North Carolina Zoological Park in Asheboro.

There were others (including a French cat) but evidently they couldn't be trained to land lunar modules.  

It's a good article with a sense of humor, and I recommend it. 

But seriously, though, send robots to Mars, have the robots build bigger robots, get all your assembly and exploration done by robots. 

A spoiler-free, and as such, cryptic post

Seriously, this was the best Emmy-worthy acting I've seen in a long time. 

Birthday month 2025

Well, it's official. Gone are the days of the expansive birthday month in which the birthday boy is omnipotent.

I forgot entirely that it was Gary's birthday month. He's so dispirited that he has doesn't care. His official answer is, "You already do everything I want," which would sound great, only what he wants is that I leave him alone while he naps.

However, during the Rachel Maddow show he said, "Write down the name of that book. i might want to buy it."

Elated, I said, "I'll buy it right now! Birthday present! But I'll need your iPad to get to Amazon Prime."

"Nah, I'm comfy." (Comfy = Surrounded by conga drums piled with hoodies and every pen, comb, or remote he might ever need.)

I sighed, "Well, buy it yourself later and call it your birthday gift."

I swear, Monday's allergist appointment better get him on the road to recovery. I need Birthday Man back making demands. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 3/20

This week the Stickybones went from this:

... to this.

Man, that was an academic exercise. It sparked absolutely no joy. I’m calling it done out of boredom.