Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: May 2025

  • TWIL: Dual nationality

    Since Mom schooled me on my French Huguenot heritage, I’ve known I was descended from Balthazar Dewolfe, legendary Huguenot asshole. I say “asshole” as his early American records speak to his begetting of slave-traders, intractable public pipe-smoking, and tagging a neighbor lady as a witch after he lost a child. What I did not know…

  • Review: The Rehearsal

    I don’t remember which one of you was watching The Rehearsal on HBO Max, but thank you, It is so weird. So meta. So folding forward then back on itself, so telling, so personal, or maybe not, because you can’t tell anything with this show. I’ve only seen the first season. The first episode encapsulates…

  • Chicago Style Pope

    Big papal excitement here yesterday at lunchtime. New Pope is from Chicago and is younger than my husband. The Chicago connection is delighting St. Louis. Chicago and St. Louis have had a long baseball rival between the formerly-dreadful Chicago Cubs and the formerly-stellar St. Louis Cardinals. Many jokes about Popes and Cardinals. It remains remarkable…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 5/8/2025

    This week the Book Cover went from this: … to this. Well I am pleased. Original:

  • Daydream

    When I was in junior high I filled my head with daydreams: impossible fantasies about fame and love and wealth and discovering I had been switched at birth away from my real family who were people who could have civil conversations with each other. I remember one of many quiet car trips with just my…

  • Tesla Truck

    “Those things creep me out.” That’s the only thing I’ve ever heard about the Tesla trucks. We saw one on the highway once, and it did look a little too dystopian for my taste, but I wouldn’t say creepy. More recently I saw this little guy tooling at 20 mph through a parking lot. Why…

  • The Seminifrical canal

    Remember Gary and his ear mites? He was talking about his imaginary ear mites just yesterday. He was discussing the mites because I believe I had just sighed, “Enough about your imaginary ear mites already.” “IMAGINARY? THEY ARE NOT IN ANY WAY IMAGINARY.” “Until you go to a doctor and that doctor says you have…

  • TWIL: Homophones are a real problem

    Gary was suffering with his skin and stomach and bowels and pain. “I HURT ALL OVER THE INFLAMATION INNERVATES ALL MY CELLS.” “That word doesn’t mean what you think it does,” I said. “Enervate means to drain of sensation.” “YOU ARE WRONG ALEXA WHAT DOES INNERVATE MEAN?” Alexa, like Gary, was wrong, and so was…

  • Gary’s current complaints

    Gary and I have tinnitus. I have mild tinnitus, the kind that lasts about a minute. Gary has tinnitus that drowns out everyday conversation and lasts for days. Gary’s current theory is that his tinnitus is caused by microscopic mites that were released into the air by the same house construction that ruined his skin.…

  • The Continuing Saga of the Mouse Detective

    I started my day telling Gary, “We need to call Rottler and see if the that lady can come by and check out the basement. There are three traps sprung, but no mouse bodies, but the insulation has fallen entirely onto the floor and it’s got mouse poop and peanut shells in it, and I…