Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: August 2019

  • Tips for Dealing with Retired Husbands

    …well, at least my retired husband. I thought when husbands retire, the biggest problem is boredom. They have too much time on their hands, then they have to start projects around the house or have affairs. I haven’t seen that with Gary. Instead, he has issues because now that he’s retired he doesn’t get to…

  • Pithy

    Years ago, I was having a conversation with a teenager, who was indignant that a friend’s father didn’t believe her about something. She said, “We kept trying to convince him but he just wouldn’t listen to us.” I said, “Oh, so you were lying.” “No.” “Yes you were.” “Well, fine, yes.” “Only liars try to…

  • Weekly Paint Progress 8/29

    Gary and the Stone Face went from this: to this … The things on his face are the shadows from his 1980’s aviator glasses. Now I want to put the blue back in the sweatshirt.

  • Right of Way

    Gary and I were sitting at a three-way stop sign, where we had arrived at the same time as one other car. “Go!” Gary said, “You have the right of way!” I went, while saying, “Why? Why do I have the right of way?” “Because you were the person on the right.” And of course…

  • The Happy Tale of the Christy is Fifty Party

    We left the Llama party, intent on being On Time for our next party: Christy’s 50th Birthday at Riley’s Pub downtown. On the drive, Gary asked how I knew Christy. For fifteen minutes I gave him what I now call: The Christory Christy commented on this blog from the early days. In some odd synchronicity…

  • The Sad, Sad, Tale of the Llama Party

    Friend Tiffany rented a pet farm and had it brought to a nearby park. Llamas! Alpacas! Goats! Friends! This was going to be epic! I prepared. I put it in my calendar. I brought along four ponchos, because as we know, alpacas spit. I wanted Gary to be there, and Gary wanted to be there,…

  • Overstock

    A few days ago, CNN promised me some huge breaking news and instead delivered a mentally ill person who happened to be the former CEO of Overstock.com. I find it really troubling that at no point did a producer pull the plug on this interview. Evidently Chris Cuomo’s relatives are all in perfect mental and…

  • Opossum

    See this animal? What type of animal is it? Gary is convinced it’s a rat. After he’s seen 10,000 opossums coming to eat at the Wildlife Buffet, he looks at this one and thinks it’s a rat. I said, “We can’t be the ones who draw rats to the neighborhood. That’s it for the –…

  • Gary’s New Driving Role

    Gary has made some poor driving decisions lately. They haven’t been unsafe, just alarming. He gets distracted, especially if he’s busy declaiming about something, and he turns off his brain and drives by muscle memory. There are stoplights near our house, and if no one else is around to follow, he will stop at the…

  • Weekly Paint Progress 8/22

    I made some progress on the Gary Stone Face Mashup. From this: to this: Of course now it’s in two different styles so I’ll have to get around that somehow, and the illicit carbon-paper tracing technique throws one into a paint-by-numbers mentality. It’ll work out. Gary’s sweatshirt will almost certainly turn into a cousin of…