Category: In Which We Mock Ourselves

Gary and I were just wasting part of my vacation by binge-watching Good Behavior again. It’s a show about … I’d say fifty percent crime, fifty percent fraught family relationships. As we started watching, my own dead family filed into my subconscious like they were entering a green room, ready to come on stage. When…

The boxes were still piling up in the garage a few days ago. Friend Anne said, “Why not just recycle them?” “Well, our trash vendor doesn’t have recycling service.” “Take them to the recycling center.” And it was then that I learned there are indeed centers where you can put your recycling, and one is…

Well, this was a surprise. My humble (but beloved) blog views spiked a few days ago. From page views under 40 (each, as I say, treasured) to over 10k on a day I was writing about lip reading. Other metrics (Google Analytics, Feedblitz) don’t back this up. I’ve alerted Typepad that something must be wrong…

My Plot and Structure book recommends you detail your plot on index cards, then shuffle the cards. Supposedly it makes you weave more surprises into your plot. I have inadvertently done this by chopping up my first half. Since I sent the oilman husband off one month early, this has happened: His mental illness is…

I have gone all in on the Exfolikate exfoliant, even unto buying the three-part system with the cleanser, exfoliant, and … moisturizer, I think? What I have found is that while I could easily use the exfoliant, when I apply it after using the cleanser, Lord, it burns, it burns. Then I apply the moisturizer,…

Even though I have the medical exemption and I won’t have to come to the office, there will be some occasions when my attendance is required. One of those is in a little over a month. Have I begun planning my outfit? Of course I have. Makeup? It’s complicated. The last time my coworkers saw…

Well, I picked the paint for the Virgin Unpainted Bathroom, sea foam green, and then Gary nixed it. So I picked some other colors (oddly, all in the Martha Stewart egg family), and I was going to wake Gary up to solicit his opinion, but one color was the clear winner: High Style Beige. Bottom…

One of my least favorite painting tasks is cutting in the edges under a popcorn ceiling. You can never get a clean line, you can’t use painter’s tape: really, it’s a headache. So, I have some time between last week when the builders put up the ceilings in the bathroom and next week when the…

We have one room that has never been painted: the master bath. It still has the pitiful coat the scab painters applied when we built the house during a local strike. Now that three decades have passed, and we are waiting for the ceiling guy to apply the popcorn to the ceiling (because it was…

I fear the people at work have discovered that I am generous with compliments, and they know how to play me. For the last few months I have noticed that I’ve been the recipient of compliments, and that when I get a compliment I return the compliment threefold. Like a compliment change machine, they slide…