Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: December 2020

  • Glasses

    Earlier this week I was having trouble reading my work laptop. I adjusted the lighting, changed the font size, it still seemed small and blurry and dark. That problem lasted from Monday through Tuesday. The work laptop was not a problem on Wednesday, but then, Wednesday I was on vacation. Thursday morning I was getting…

  • Eyebrows

    So, as I said yesterday, I’m feeling a little insecure about my appearance lately. That’s why I was delighted that Amazon chose today to deliver a device that will up my eyebrow game: an eyebrow template. I have great trouble making my eyebrows symmetrical. I know how they’re supposed to look, and the best I…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 12/17

    This week the big painting is this, because I will not let peonies beat me. And I think that I will not do as I was previous advised to: to think of the flower as a sphere — at the start, anyway. I’ll make it more spherical after it’s done instead of at the start.…

  • Nostradamus

    Seriously, Nostradamus, what kind of seer are you? You accurately tag the Great Fire of London, Napoleon, French Revolution, Hitler, and both World Wars, but then you completely whiff it on the great global pandemic. No Quatrain for 2020? Into all countries comes a deadly flu / Greeted in the streets with a clanging of…

  • More Work on the House

    Do you have a basement? Is it leaking? Yet? Well, when you get leaks, you have two approaches. Patch the walls, dig up the cement, put in a French drain, and try to relieve the hydrostatic pressure … this adds up to a large investment. And then, do what the wall-patchers say is your last…

  • Night terrors

    A few nights ago I sat up in bed, yelling. I would say I woke up screaming from a nightmare, only none of those things are true. I didn’t wake up: I can’t say I was asleep yet. I was in that twilight state when the baby chickens walk around the bedroom. It wasn’t a…

  • Rewriting the Novel: a Brief Setback

    I slogged my way through the resolution for The Novel, and it felt so unnatural that I had to go back to the outline and see how I was going to get the main character from Point A to Point Z. This was a big job, too big for the iPad. This was a job…

  • Very Very Soon …

    2020 will be over in 20 days. Then we can start complaining about 2021. Top Ten Possible 2021 complaints: This airplane to Italy is too empty. How did I ever spend an hour in a grocery store? You mean we have to drive to the restaurant? Politics is soooo boring. Why do all these other…

  • Electoral College

    And this is why I voted in person. The President is now harping that mail-in votes are “illegal” and should be thrown out only in the states where he lost. He didn’t lose in Missouri, of course, a state as red as the blood of a deer machined-gunned to death by a beet farmer if…

  • Weekly Paint Progress (?): 12/10

    This week the peonies went from this: … to another permutation I won’t even show you, then to this … … and then I gave up. Whatever I am trying to do, I’m not ready yet. I painted over it with white. Picture a white rectangle below. Let’s look at the original and laugh: The…