Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: January 2021

  • The Road [SPOILERS]

    Seven years ago when I was on my Pulitzer binge, I read The Road by Cormack McCarthy. I had some issues with it. First, I confused Cormack McCarthy with Carson McCullers, so I was a generation off to start, and then I was really taken aback at how dark she must have gotten in her…

  • Earplugs

    I’ve had awful sleep lately. One night there were animals rattling around in our attic (or possibly on the roof), chittering loudly enough to wake me. The next night Gary was the animal rattling around. He can’t get comfortable, so he switches positions in bed, and then he hurls himself in the bedroom chair, and…

  • Gary and the Men

    Gary’s a loyal true husband, with one exception: if he can throw me over to make friends with a workman he will do it in a heartbeat. It’s particularly ridiculous because the man has no friendships with any other men. I don’t know if he was a plumber or a repairman in a previous life,…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 1/28

    This week the peonies went from this: … to this: Now it looks like there’s a monster jaw. That trifurcated petal at the bottom might have to change. The dog bank went from this: … to this:

  • Home lab

    Way back pre-pandemic we would go to the doctor and have machines check our vitals. Then Gary got sick, and he got a blood oxygen meter. Then he got one of those fingertip electrocardiographs, and we both played with that for a day. Now he has added a home blood pressure machine to his collection.…

  • Nuisances

    Evidently, my home landline (shush, I need a landline) is so busy with robocalls that my provider suggests that instead of blocking bad calls, they could just block everything and let me flag the people I want to get through. I don’t know if I like this idea. Paying for a phone line that advertises…

  • Missouri Dead Last

    Doesn’t matter that I’m not in the few few waves of vaccines: our state doesn’t have any vaccines at all. Here’s yesterday’s local newspaper headline: The online version doesn’t use the word “DEAD“. I’m glad to know that other people winced at that headline. I mean, it’s true, but do I want to wake up…

  • New Press Secretary

    Dear New Red-Headed White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, I have scanned your press briefing for Inauguration Day, and I am quite that you missed an opportunity. But it isn’t too late. I will love you forever if you say, “That was the smallest crowd to witness an inauguration, period.” Think about it, Ms Psaki.…

  • Rewriting the Novel: Exhilaration

    Well, evidently writing is quite easy if you schedule it into your day. I find I get quite a bit of writing done if I start at 11:00 pm and then write to … well, let’s see, it’s FOUR A.M. NOW. Some people say you shouldn’t write for a certain length of time, but aim…

  • Rewriting the Novel: I Have Had to Buy 100 More Tiny Magnets

    Is this progress? I find I have had great success writing crabbed notes on scraps of index cards, though. The notes mean I don’t need to write things chronologically, which is a chore. It’s good to have two ways to be productive. On left-brain days I outline, or right-brain days I write. I don’t even…