Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: May 2013

  • Weather update

    For those following CNN – there was a tornado in my area. If neighborhood rumor is to be believed it hit two blocks from us. I refuse to go look. A stately oak tree came entirely up out of the ground in our back yard. And another is leaning on the house. I don’t think…

  • Leaving My Language

    English is my first language. I have no second. Well, I sometimes have little chats with myself in Latin, but just because the voices in my head know the same words I do. Recently, I almost convinced a Mexican woman I spoke Spanish. We were talking about small mammals, and she said, “We had a…

  • Warning, with Apologies to Jenny Johnson

    When I am an old woman I shall wear Poise pads, Not the largest but the second smallest size, for when I cough. And go for walks at four with my husband around the subdivision In high-arched shoes that don’t suit me. I shall go to Walmart and keep the receipt And then take a…

  • Cheaters

    When I was 25 or so, I taught PC skills to adults at the Chrysler plant. When students failed to show three weeks in a row, my teaching partner and I had to call to see if they intended to drop. One student, call him Ed (because I don’t remember his name) missed three weeks,…

  • Is That Your Husband?

    The tree man had been in the yard with Gary, looking at the tree Monday’s storm knocked down. I hadn’t seen either of them for half an hour when the tree man was at the front door again, all alone. He knocked, I answered, and he asked me, “Is that your husband?” “What?” “Is that…

  • World War One Museum In Kansas City

    I’ve wanted to see the World War One Museum in KC since Dave at Blogography gave it such a glowing review. Before I went, here’s what I knew about WWI: In Flanders field the poppies blow Archduke Ferdinand Downton Abbey Season 2 Doughboys Lusitania Not exactly World War One for two hundred, Alex. I stepped…

  • My Relationship with the Raphael Hotel

    I can walk into a Super8 motel and be above it all, certainly. Even more, I can walk nearly naked yet unblushing through the lobby of the Jazz in Chicago. I can even chat pleasantly with the front desk at the Hotel Lancaster in Paris (as an equal, though, not as a ruler. Liberté, égalité,…

  • Fine eggs and a tie

    Gary forgot his tie, and when I wondered aloud to the front desk where I could find one before nine they loaned us a tie. Very nice. The eggs Benedict are as nice as the service.

  • This place speaks my language

  • How skinny is this asparagus?

    How skinny is this asparagus? My hair is thicker than this asparagus. This is the New Princess Merida of asparagus. Abercrombie and Fitch wants to knit this asparagus a custom sweater.