Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Author: Ellen S______

  • Love letters from Dad: part three – the beginning

    Today’s been a long day. Evidently, everything I know about how my Mom and Dad met, the trajectory of their romance, all of the family lore — is just not true. Had you asked me this morning how Mom and Dad met, I’d have said, “Oh, it was sad. Mom’s sister Dolores died in a…

  • Love letters from Dad: part two – the love

    Were it not for the references to Falstaff beer I would never believe that my Dad – my stoic, emotionless, rational Dad – wrote three letters a day full of all the passion I have never heard from any man in my entire life. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” And then…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 1/22/2026

    So this is the previous… This is the progress … And this is the goal.

  • Love letters from Dad: part one – the timeline

    Back in December of 2017 I looked in the box marked “Mom correspondence” and read Mom’s letters. Somehow I skipped the letters sent from my soon-to-be stepfather, aka “Dad”. This new information from Dad’s letters all prompted me to check the dates and make a spreadsheet to track who did what to whom and when,…

  • Message from Mom beyond the grave

    I’ve been going through Mom’s old papers and correspondence. One thing she wrote was called “The Growing Old Part,” and now that I am too growing a little bit older, I read it with interest. She wrote the below musing to herself in 1984. She was born in 1934, so I guess she was a…

  • UPDATED: Tsk, this again

    More Northern lights they say. Columns this time. UPDATE: Well, turns out you had to have some magnetic BZ number that mid-Missouri did not have. Rest of the hemisphere had it, we did not.

  • TWIL: Keith Dudding has yet another outlet

    Keith Dudding, bluegrass expert on the now-defunct, mourned, eclectic OG KDHX radio station, has an additional place where you can hear him, because community radio in St. Louis will resurrect on Feb. 1. He says:: BIG NEWS! A great mix of music is coming to the web waves (for now) as Community Radio STL (http://www.crstl.fm)…

  • Trump is the new Bread Company Shoe Dude

    Trump has been so wacky lately that no one has really focused on his fashion choices. I didn’t know this, but sometimes he wears other lapel pins in addition to his Presidential Costume flag pin. I suppose I could say it’s like Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who was famous for her brooch diplomacy as…

  • My dentist has the coolest technology

    I was in bed at nine o’clock last night when I realized I had forgotten to go to the dentist. I was supposed to have contacted him sometime during the day — way before nine o’clock at night — because I’d had some dental work, and one element of it had to be removed. He…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 1/15/2026

    So this is the previous… This is the progress (I didn’t do much but lighten the table but that has to dry before I glaze)… And this is the goal.