Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: September 2021

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 9/24

    A few years ago I took this photo of a Buffalo. Last week we had an exercise at work in which we had to spend 10 minutes doing something creative. The paints were out already so I slapped this out. No one said “dog with horns.” They correctly identified it as a Buffalo. I will…

  • Post From the Past

    Perhaps I will be comforted by the reminder of the last epidemic I survived. This is a re-post from the 2009 swine flu epidemic. I was in bed this morning. Gary was awake. “Ellen, I’ve been thinking you might want to sell those Elton John / Billy Joel tickets.” I ran it through a few…

  • Elsewhere

    In the last thirty-odd years, I often get the urge to sleep elsewhere. I slept elsewhere in Maui on the honeymoon. After that we would travel every other year when we could, even someplace small like an overnight in Kansas City. After Gary retired we started to get away twice a year, with day trips…

  • American Experience / Sandra Day O’Connor

    As you know, I love the American Experience tv show, so I launched into the latest one about Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female U.S. Supreme Court justice. I didn’t love all of it. Usually you get some kind of revelation about the person in these things, but not this time. Perhaps because she is…

  • Gary and Football

    I don’t understand why, but Gary is watching football again. He played football in high school (and takes medication daily for the resulting brain injury). Still liked football. He followed the football Cardinals, of course, until they were cruelly traded to Arizona. Still liked football. He followed the LA Rams during the time they slummed…

  • Update: Cardinals Winning Streak

    Our baseball team habitually stinks until mid-season, then they harvest the farm teams and become the Saint Louis Phoenixes and soar into the playoffs. This year the Saint Louis Sports Drama Committee decided to juice it up and make them suck until the last possible moment and then have a dramatic reversal in which they…

  • Color Download

    I was walking through the great room, looking for a snack between meetings. “Ellen, look at the TV!” “It’s a commercial.” “No, look at the picture.” “What do you mean?” “Can’t you see? They downloaded more more colors.” Evidently, according to Gary, they have downloaded new colors to the television and the picture is significantly…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 9/23

    This week the sundials went from this: …to this: …from the original of this: Not as satisfying as the birdbath. And clearly I need to go a bit darker. Will I? Probably.

  • Tunings and Positions

    I am not getting any better at the guitar, so I am not practicing, so therefore I am not getting any better at the guitar, and so on until the snake consumes itself. I was watching Lindsey Buckingham on Colbert last week and I thought, “Is he playing power chords?” I was all prepared to…

  • Pronouns

    I have edited my email signature at work to include my preferred pronouns: she/her. I guess those will do. There’s no pronoun for menopaused women. I should identify as Post-she. Ante-her. Semi-him? It seems odd to have done that, given that I don’t remember encountering any person at work who identifies as “they”, but perhaps…