Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: February 2024

  • TWIL: “Wayr painstkmg askew ” Translated, OR, War, Painting, Askew

    So, on Thursday my TV friend taught me about how retreating Germans booby-trapped manor houses. From the US Department of Veteran’s Affairs: The Germans identified a house that advancing Allies would find suitable for a command post. A picture on the wall was hung crooked. There was a Teller mine behind the picture; the Germans…

  • I Have Absolutely No Idea

    Sometimes I get ideas for things to document on the blog, and I make a short post as a draft. I composed this on Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. This week I learned wayr painstkmg askew. As you do. There’s no text in the post to give me any idea what I was thinking about.…

  • Crows Volley in Response

    The crows have rejected all the jewelry bits but for one: a silver ball. That one is gone. It was the biggest item in the trove I left last week. I imagine the crows looked at the little pins and staples and said, “Well at least this silver ball isn’t a choking hazard, I will…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 2/8/2024

    This week the mandolin went from this: … to this. And the original was this.

  • Cat Will Require Therapy

    Previously, Gary was dismayed the cat was doing an acrobatic leap over the basement steps. “Goldie, please don’t do that: you’re going to die. “ Gary realized that he had no control over the cat’s urge to leap, cats-gonna-cat, so he decided to switch his approach. Instead of discouraging the leaps, he encourages the leaps.…

  • Jerry Grievances

    Well, now you’ve got me thinking about Jerry. You’re right, he did make a lot of bad decisions. Many of these grievances are ones I have mentioned before. He set fires. He set the sausage fire in Galveston, and also set a couch on fire by not extinguishing a cigarette, but instead leaving it on…

  • Easy Diagnosis

    I don’t know if they still have this article available free, but I found this deep dive into a writer’s medical diagnosis fascinating. That poor man. I, on the other hand, had the most straightforward MS diagnosis ever. The gastroenterologist got it in two questions. “What are your symptoms / Do you have MS?” (No,…

  • TWIL: Crows

    I learned that crows will leave shiny gifts in exchange for food or other shiny things. It’s been documented. Crows even strung evergreens through pull-tabs to make art for this family. Usually the crows trade with someone who has been feeding them for a while. I thought we qualified, given that it’s been ten years.…

  • Checking in with the Neurologist

    I try to document my neurologist visits here. I was a bit slower on my cognitive test. This tracks with how I have been at work. Every Monday the rest of the team remembers the status of the projects we are working on, and they say to me, “Remember, Ellen, we talked about that Friday?”…

  • Dishwasher

    So we have a new dishwasher. I calculated that a dishwasher can cost almost three times as much as long as it lasts three times longer. (Twenty years, it claims.) I’m also happy to pay extra if it shuts off when water-in does not equal water-out; that way my wood kitchen floor will not warp…