Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: April 2008

  • Martha Stewart (Not) Living: The Wake

    Or:The Wake, Part the First Sure, other people have funeral directors to plan the gathering to honor the deceased. Since Mom had requested immediate cremation, we needed to find a way for people to gather and remember Mom. I suppose we could have rented space at a funeral home, but Mom has a nice large…

  • A Good Philosophy of Marriage

    So, my social whirl this weekend so far has been GNO at the house of Friend #6, and oh, Mom’s Remembrance Party. I need to absorb the Mom thing for a while, so let me tell you my favorite part of GNO. Friend #6, you will recall, is the friend who “can switch from ‘Oreo’…

  • File Under Misc.

    So, at 4:30 I woke up and thought my hard drive on the laptop was really thrashing a lot. So much it was shaking the eyeglasses on the lid. Of course, other than that, I slept through the earthquake. But I really enjoyed the aftershock that came when I was at the lawyer’s office. I…

  • I Smell Like Chanel

    I Smell Like Chanel

    Since the Mom Death File Instructions specify that we let her friends take something from the house to remember her by, Dave and I have been hoarding heirlooms before the MomFest on Saturday. (We don’t know what to call it; there’s no service, so it isn’t a memorial service. It isn’t a visitation or a…

  • A Post With Hair On It

    The Gods were with me today. First, I got this fine award from KC at All The World’s a Stage. And I would give you one, but you might have one already. Ajooja does, and RachelSkirts does. However, Becs is highly deserving, as is ~~Silk, because they write faithfully, without enough praise. And I have…

  • Another Downside to Hospice

    Since you get the grieving out of the way before your loved one dies, you find yourself recovering far sooner than is appropriate. For example: 1. I went back to work Monday. I’m sure there’s some prig saying “Heartless cow” behind my back. But, of course, screw him or her. I mean, that prig isn’t…

  • Hospice by the Numbers: Part 2

    10. I am ten pounds lighter than I was 2 weeks ago. Mom whispered in the hospital, “Hospice diet. Write a book.” 9 out of 10. The number of impending death signs Mom showed on her last day. The hospice people give you a book that spells out what physical changes you can expect at…

  • Temptation 2008

    Okay. What follows was actually kind of alarming. But it isn’t sad. I’m almost done with sad. (On the topic of being done with sad: today I watched the TiVoed My Name is Earl episodes in which he is in a coma … and they discussed pulling the plug … and Gary screamed like a…

  • Comfort

    Today was to be the Day of Sleep. But I just woke up from a dream in which Mom and my friend Catherine the Red were both in hospice. Catherine the Red was tooling around town in a convertible with her respirator mask and her hospice nurse, while I couldn’t get my mom’s respirator mask…

  • Hospice by the Numbers: Part 1

    Number of hours since I’ve cried: 24 Number of months I thought Mom would live: 6This was odd. The Wednesday that I took Mom to the ER, even before she called, I randomly thought, “I bet Mom won ‘t be alive in six months.” Then, when I saw that the hospice booklet recommended hospice for…