Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: August 2022

  • Weekly Paint and Home Improvement Progress: 8/11

    Oh, am I steamed. I have never heard of such a thing before, but the basement drainage company is “giving up” on my basement. Concrete is too thick. Nothing they can do. I asked who their biggest competitor was. So, they have put in a French drain that leads halfway toward the sump pump and…

  • Happy Birthday?

    My 40th birthday was pretty great. My 50th birthday was okay. This 60th birthday is horrifying. Average life span of MS patients? 74 years. When did Mom die? 71 years. That’s less than a dozen years to go. Also, the other day my brother commented, “You look just like Granceil,” our grandmother, and it is…

  • New Toy 3

    Gary briefly turned against the new tennis racket bug zappers. They make a zap noise but don’t cause any flies to drop out of the air. I don’t know if the fly explodes into atoms, or is re-energized and files off stronger. After he turned against the rackets, Gary bought some heavy artillery: a Bug-A-salt…

  • What’s Smaller Than an Earworm? An Earmite?

    Usually when a song is stuck in my head I can hear the whole tune, and most but not all of the words. They says that’s why it’s “stuck” — if you look up the lyrics and sing it all the way through it becomes unstuck. That works for me. Other people recommend math problems.…

  • Calling Strangers

    There are times during my job that I am expected to call strangers. It’s not cold calling, which would kill me, but just “Call Jane Blahblah in Compliance and get her sign off.” I hate calling Jane Blahblah. She might be perfectly nice, but I hate calling her, because we’re strangers, and it’s all the…

  • A Day Out at the DMV

    The slow-moving Real ID Act has finally crawled into my reality and I need a new driver’s license that will conform across states, prove I am not a terrorist, and oddly change visa limits for Australians. This means I had to go in person to the Department of Motor Vehicles. No way to duck it.…

  • Rewriting the Novel: Itching

    Recently, I’ll be weeding or some other mundane chore, and I’ll think, “Maggie and Joe need to come to an agreement at the start of the resolution chapter.” I wouldn’t call it inspiration, I’m not struck by the genius of these ideas. It’s pretty mundane stuff. It’s just odd that they bubble up out of…

  • Weekly Paint and Home Improvement Progress: 8/4

    Lord God in heaven, the cement in the basement is too thick and they have to come out next week with the BIG jackhammer. The crew did explain what was wrong – the “footer” that the basement wall sits on is increasingly deep, so it works against the downhill slope we have that you think…

  • Divergent Thinking

    I had an interesting divergent thinking challenge last week. The power went out while I was working from home, as it has too many times recently, and the cable and phone went out too. I assumed the cable was out because the power was out, but the cable company sent a message that they were…

  • Rain 2022

    I loved rain until these past two weeks. First we had the foot of rain overnight. The basement water wasn’t so bad, but Gary tried to navigate though the blocked off streets, and that was frightening. Saint Louis did an excellent job preparing for the flooded streets, and only one person died. The rain moved…