My Brain on Books XXVIII

 

I am reading for The Office of Letters and Lights the folks who bring us NaNoWriMo today as I love what they are doing for literacy with their Young Writer's Programs and because I've participated in NaNo every year since 2004.  I have been blessed to have it in my life and would like to give something back if only kudos and link love.  I'm putting this plug at the top in hopes some who stop by will check out their site and see all the great things they do to foster love of reading and writing and story in kids. 

This post will be organized like a blog inside a blog with recent updates stacked atop previous ones. I may be posting some updates on Twitter @Joystory and the Joystory fb fanpage. But this is where I do anything more than a line or two.  Including mini-challenges that don't require a separate post..   

Be sure and see my tribute poem to Dewey and the Thon she birthed at the bottom of this post

1:11AM Sunday - Too engrossed in reading...

Did not take into account, when planning to spend the whole readathon on my bed, the time consuming and frustrating task it is to set up my laptop on my lap desk, open and wake it and then when finished with the task of updating and/or visiting various readathon social media to dismantle the setup, putting all of its elements away in their various slots within arms reach.  If I had, I think I might have considered it a better plan to leave the laptop set up at my desk in the other room where I could stop by on my way back from bio breaks.  Because of the frustrating experience with the first update upon waking this morning, I kept putting off new updates preferring to keep reading.

My expectation to finish Julia Fine's What Should Be Wild by noon was as fantastical as the story itself.  The factors contributing to that include my messed up sense of time passing, my need to savor the language of so many phrases and paragraphs by rereading them and/or highlighting them, my petulant bladder and a nap attack that robbed me of over an hour between 11 and 1 and the lengthy kitchen raid that followed that.

Based on my memory of the window light in the room as I switched books, I judge that it must have been between 7 and 8 PM.  The Libby App tells me that I read for 11 hours and 47 minutes but that includes the 38% that I read in the two weeks before this morning.

The book I picked up next was Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country by Cristina Rivera Garza.  I have advanced even slower through this collection of essays by a Latina feminist and human rights activist about the decades long War on Drugs and the impact its horrors have on individuals, community and national unity/identity.  The state of perpetual fear and loss is dehumanizing unless grieving becomes a communal response actively weaving them into solidarity across all classes and borders against the power brokers imposing atrocities with impunity--the drug cartels, the police/state and the northern empire.

One of the themes running through these essays is the efficacy of storytelling (oral, written or visual arts) in processing the grief.  Storytelling from personal diary to social media, from novels to journalism, from poetry to photography, from music to statuary, from whispered confessions between intimates to testifying at small and large gatherings, story subverts the efforts of the Powers That Be to divide and conquer via the dehumanizing butchering of language and bodies.  Thus storytelling is the ultimate resistance against tyranny.

7:55AM - Oh Darn! Forgot to Set My Alarm.

Will be starting out with Julia Fine's What Should Be Wild.  I started it earlier thus month after I had put a hold on her newest, The Upstairs House, via the Libby ebook library I have access to with my local library card.  My turn came for the new one a few days ago and I'm eager to start it but I am also eager to finish What Should Be Wild.  It is a surrealistic or magical realism story about a young girl whose touch both kills and brings back to life anything organic.  It has something to do with a curse on the women in her family.  The plot is complex, the ambience is eerie and the prose is luscious.  I'm 38% in and hope to finish by noon. 

5:00AM - Opening Survey!

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?
   

Longview, WA  USA

My Mom's home which is where I live.

Will spend much of it here:

 

That's a pic of my bed on the floor of Mom's room taken for a NaNo prep post last October but it looks about the same except the pillow pile is about double that now so that it is like a recliner.  it is the most comfortable and quietest space in the house and because Mom is at my brother's home for the weekend I don't need to worry about disturbing her before 9am and after 9pm.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

    

NF Grieving by Cristina Rivera Garza

Fic  The Upstairs House by Julia Fine

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

Blueberry Yogurt Smoothie dark chocolate.

   
4) Tell us a little something about yourself!
   

   As of next Monday I'll have been a widow for seven months.  The grief, tho not as fresh as it was during last October's Thon nor as constant, can still fold me over intermittently in moments as sudden as a gasp.

Tho, I managed to participate in the Thon and NaNo last fall with sporadic posting, I took a 'brief' hiatus after mine and Ed's anniversary December 2nd and am only now returning.  

I had been just about to resume posting with announcements of my ROW80 goals for January right after Christmas only to be hit with another grief blow when Ed's brother died.

This spring I started working with a long term caregiver who comes in three times a week to help me with chores, errands and taking me for walks.  Because of my visual impairment and high-functioning autism I will always have to have this kind of help; especially to live in my own apartment.

In March my long time counselor had to quit her job and shortly after that my first caregiver quit her job with the company providing my care.  I'm currently on my third caregiver since the first week of March.  These losses have been compounding the grief over Ed's death like applying icy hot ointment to a healing burn.

I made the mistake of allowing grief to steal my words though.  For months after December 2nd I neither wrote nor read.  And I know I need my words to process any changes in my life and boy or boy change seems to be gunning for me.  Like most on the spectrum change is not my friend.

But reading has been returning for me this month.  In the last two or three weeks I've finished around a dozen books.  Which means focus has returned.  And the completion of several emails proved that focus is working for writing as well.  So i figured I better use the opportunity of the Thon breaking the blogging ice to recommit to regular posts.  So as soon as I've recovered from the Thon, I'll rejoin ROW80 writing accountability group with a goals post for the Wednesday check-in.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? 

   Tho I have many tree books, ebooks and audio books via Library of Congress talking books for the print disabled, I'm putting most if not all of my focus for the thon on the fifteen ebooks I have checked out from two Washington State libraries via the Libby app because both cards are tapped out and I have holds about to become available and besides more than half of them are due by next weekend and several of them had been on hold for weeks or months and if I don't finish I'll have to get back in line.

It is interesting how many of them have some connection to the concepts of grief, loss, widowhood or broken hearts--both fiction and non-fiction as will become clear as I share the titles in my updates as the day progresses.

4:44 AM - I'm setting this to go live at 4:44 AM but it may be as much as an hour before I check in.  Making coffee, Getting eyes focused.  Settling in at primary reading station.  But I will be reading by 5AM.

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

vote, fav and share for Dewey

We Miss You Dewey

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Sunday Serenity

I made it the full 24 hours again.  First time in 2 years.  Before spring of 2013 doing the 24 hours was easy breezy.  It was my thing.  The thing I could still do with the best of those who could.

With my visual impairment it is no longer possible for me to excel at reading fast or reading long so my metrics on number of pages or completed books are sad.  So I would always, since the first Dewey thon in 2007, take pleasure and satisfaction from being one of the few who could breeze through the 24 hours.

After all I'd had a lot of practice since my tween years.  It's always been my thing, staying up all night.  And usually gone hand-in-hand with reading.

But spring of 2013 I was put on a new antidepressant, Trazadone, which made me groggy and kept me that way for 8 to twelve hours.  Skipping doses would have nasty repercussions--headache, dizziness, vision issues and anxiety attacks--so for the last four thons I had to quit two to four hours before the end.

The end for me here on the Pacific Coast was 5am today. I made it.  As I hoped I would the moment I got the OK from my med nurse to withdraw off the Traz.  But when I was unable to sleep the night before that put me already 17 hours awake when the thon started for at 5am Saturday.  Thus I've been awake for 41 hours and it looks like it will be at least 42 before I'm actually asleep.

I did manage to read one book cover to cover for the thon: How to Avoid Making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy) by Julia Cameron and Elizabeth Cameron (artist). 80 odd cartoons illustrating quite LOL the many excuses artists use to explain why the aren't doing their art.  Too many of them too true of me:

• Demanding 15 hour blocks of free time before considering getting started while using scattered 15 minute chunks for frivolous things.
• Preferring to watch the movie on the screen over watching the one on the back of your eyelids. (your story)
• Feeling depressed you don't have time to write.  Then turning on the TV to make yourself feel better.
• Acquiring high-maintenance relationships that suck time and energy and overload you on drama that doesn't belong to you and leaves no room for the drama of your stories.
• Surrounding yourself with negative naysayers.
• Setting yourself up for failure by planning a project to big and complex for your current skills.
• Getting stuck in the research stage forever.

OK that last wasn't in the book but it should be.  It is one of my things.

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Room to Run (ROW80 Check-In)

Room to Run

We went to the beach today.  Mom my two sisters and I.

It was Sunset Beach in Oregon not far from the mouth of the Columbia River.  The expanse of sand at low tide is vast, flat and wet.  It is possible to drive the car onto the packed sand right to the edge of the wet sand and park which allowed Mom to walk to the spot we set up the chairs to watch the surf.

It's possible to drive on the wet sand uncovered by the low tide but not wise to park there for long if you intend to drive off of it again.

Between our chairs and the surf line was an expanse of wet sand at least the width of a quarter mile racetrack.  I knew from experience that this it the best possible surface for running.  It's nearly as low impact as a trampoline.  I took off running toward the water.

I actually never sat in a chair the whole two hours we were there.  I ran and wandered, slopped through the edge of the surf, spun in circles with my arms stretched out until I was too dizzy to walk straight, stumbled zigzag fashion until I could hold a course and ran some more.  And started all over again.

It was the first time in decades I was able to full out run without hesitation for there was no fear of tripping, stepping off the edge of a narrow path or running into someone or something in motion darting out from the dark periphery of my visual field.

Having heard it was going to be warm--high 70s or 80s, I'd dressed in layers starting with shorts and a tank top.  Over the tank I'd worn a hooded, long-sleeved, lightweight cotton pullover for the ride against the car cooler's icy breath.  I fully expected to pull it off once we arrived.  My sister came prepared to body surf on her boogie board.

But we were met with a stiff churning breeze. Chilly and stinging with the moisture and sand it carried. I had to put on a hooded windbreaker and a cotton scarf around my neck.  With my legs bare I was still tensing with the chill.  Which is why I started running and then stayed in motion the whole two hours.

Those two hours freed me from the oppressive caged feeling I've been struggling with for months.  Fifteen minutes in I found Happy.  It lasted until at least an hour after climbing back into the car.

The breeze seemed to have swept my mind free of clutter giving me clarity of thought.  Briefly, but enough for me to latch on to an insight or two.

Seeing the sand stretched out all around reminded me of a motivational story I'd read on line recently.  One I'd heard before:

There was a speaker (preacher or motivational) who set a large transparent bowl before his audience and put in it several large rocks until there was no room for another.  

He asks the audience if the bowl is full and they chorus 'Yes!'   

He then adds a bunch of stones half the size of the rocks until there is no room for more.  

'Is it full now?'  and again the chorus answers 'Yes.'

Next he adds rocks small enough to close up in his fist until there is no more room.

'What about now?'  Still the chorus of 'Yes.' but maybe fewer voices, maybe a drop in volume.

Now he pours in gravel.  And asks again.  The yeses are mixed with noes many sounding like questions themselves.

And sure enough there is still room for sand, filtering down through the crevices and crannies all the way to the bottom.

'Surely it is full now, eh?' He asks, pouring himself a drink from a pitcher of water.  The chorus is divided into firm yeses and noes.

He grins, pouring the pitcher of water over the surface of sand.

Retold in my own words.

The rocks, gravel, sand and water represent items on a todo list.  The main point being made is that in order to fit in the biggest things--the highest priority or most time-consuming--they need to go in first.  The secondary point is that many tasks can be fit into the interstices--standing in line, waiting rooms, stalled traffic.

I was reminded once again that writing needs to be one of the big rocks.  Although many of its related and component tasks can fit into the interstices it needs also a block of dedicated time.

Which has given me the missing motivation to return to the early bird schedule.  A motive that is purely my own.  Not an attempt to please my husband who is a natural early bird.  Nor to comply with anyone else's idea of what I should be doing or even my idea of what others think I should be doing.

I will be easing into it though.  For to start off with expectations of an instant and perfect switch would set me up for failure.  Still I don't think it will take me as long as it took last year when I began the transition the first time.  The insomnia is not as intransigent and I won't have to relearn the same lessons from all the trials and errors from that time.

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Chin Grin

After Terry had cleaned it up and spread a reddish brown, homemade anti-bacterial solution with cayenne and other Native American wound treatments.

My latest tangle with the dishwasher door split my chin like an overripe plum, bruised my jaw and snapped my neck back with a crackle-pop that had me thinking for an endless second that I'd be looking to Christopher Reeves' last years for inspiration and motivation.

Once again sleep deprivation, ADD and visual impairment joined forces in an attempt to knock some sense into me.  When am I going to learn:

• to always push in the rack and shut the dishwasher door if I'm going to turn away for anything other than to reach into the sink for another item
• to always turn in place and get visual bearings before attempting to move in the new direction
• to not be thinking ahead or about anything other than the task at hand when it involves the dishwasher door, knives, or anything hot--stove, oven, dishes, pans
• to move with slow deliberateness always

I'd just served Mom's lunch tray and had gotten a deep pan out of the dishwasher that I needed to put the artichoke to soak that I was going to fix for dinner.  It had wilted a bit and I hoped soaking it would revive it.

I put the pan in the sink, the artichoke in the pan and ran the pan full of water.  Having forgot to shut the dishwasher door immediately, I had now forgotten it was open so when I turned right to head to my desk to grab my Nexus so I could read to Mom while she ate there it was and it was too late to stop my motion.

I was in mid step with my left foot off the floor as I twisted right on the right foot when my right knee encountered the bottom rack and...well, I now have a concrete and visceral understanding of the cliche, 'getting the pins knocked out from under me'.

I was in the air like a bowling pin hit low and barely touched the dishwasher rack or door before landing chin first on the other side.  In my head it sounded like a bowling ball hitting the floor.

I now have a concrete visceral knowledge of what it means to take a punch in the jaw.  This should come in handy when writing the scenes in my stories involving fist fights, bullies, domestic violence and such.

As I verified I could wiggle my fingers and toes, I was hearing Mom calling from her chair, "What happened?  Are you all right?"  But her voice was faded and far and I wondered if it was just my pulse pounding in my ear or was I browning out.

I couldn't see any better than I could hear as my hair was in my eyes and my hand was trapped under my ribs so I couldn't brush it away.

I tried to kick the floor to get the attention of my nephew downstairs but my legs were trapped under the dishwasher door.

All I wanted was to sleep but I knew Mom would try to come see if I didn't answer her.  So I pushed the floor with my free left hand and managed to flip over onto my back which allowed me to suck in a lungful of air and the pulse pounding in my ear went silent and Mom's voice and the traffic noise, the air pump and the fridge motor were all clamoring for attention.

I finally managed to say loud enough for Mom to hear, "I'm OK.  I can move.  Don't try to come in here."

Then I tried to call my nephew again but there was no way I could project my voice to be heard down in the basement.

It was about then that I noticed a tickle on my neck and jawline and crawling into my ear.  I reached up and touched it and found it wet and hot.  So I touched my chin and my finger sank into mush triggering a vivid vision of the split in the plum I'd trimmed and shared with Mom for lunch.

Was that nausea? If so I better not be laying flat on my back.

Breathe.

I struggled to turn over again, pulling my knees up to my belly to free my legs first and then onto my hands and knees.  That's when I saw the puddle of blood bigger than my head where Id been face down at first and a new baby puddle forming as drops rained down from my chin.

Breathe.

Two feet away beside the back door was Mom's white visor that I'd been wearing to cut the glare from the window as I worked at my computer that morning.  It was spattered with tiny red dots.  Does that mean my chin actually squirted when it first split?

Breathe.

Now it was imperative I get my nephews attention as I could not move from this spot until I had something to staunch the blood flow.  I tried pounding the floor with the padded bone above my wrist but that hurt.  I tried the other and so did it.  Later I discovered they were both bruised already.

I think they encountered the edge of the dishwasher rack.  Which might explain why I nearly cleared the dishwasher before landing chin first like a diver.  My hands might have added to the momentum with a little push off if they came down mostly on the far edge of the rack.

Now Mom was trying to call Levi too but she can barely project her voice to be heard across the room.  She would have done better by pounding the floor with her cane.  But with her tray on her lap she couldn't reach it.

Adding to the challenge of getting Levi's attention was the factor of his room being at the far end of the house from Mom.  I was at the midpoint.  I was right across the hall from the stairwell and the laundry room was under me.  Ah the laundry shoot was right above my head and a foot to my right as I faced the pantry cupboard.

I reached up and grabbed the edge of the open shoot and lifted myself up to a crouch until I could knock loose the stick propping its door open.  The stick fell down the chute and I started banging that lid down again and again until I heard Levi's feet on the stairs.

I sank back to the floor sitting with my back to the chute.  Now blood was soaking my collar and running down my front inside my shirt.

Breath.

Levi got me a wad of paper towel to hold against my chin, closed the dishwasher door, cleaned up the blood on the floor and pantry doors, dropped the visor down the laundry chute, and called my cousin's husband to ask if he could take me to the ER.  Later that evening he made and served Mom and I scrambled eggs.

I spent the time waiting on Terry gathering stuff I needed--purse, ID, medical card, cell phone, Nexus, charger.  Then dropping a quick message into chat for Ed to find when he got off work--that I'd had a bad fall, split my chin and Terry was on his way over to take me to ER.

But when Terry arrived he brought a first aid kit and offered me the option of his tending to it with butterfly bands.  I jumped at that offer because I'd rather risk a scar than spend hours in an environment that has nearly every one of my panic/anxiety triggers--noise, crowds, flickering lights and shadow, social engagement.  Call it sensory overload.

Besides a scar might help me remember:

• to always push in the rack and shut the dishwasher door if I'm going to turn away for anything other than to reach into the sink for another item
• to always turn in place and get visual bearings before attempting to move in the new direction
• to not be thinking ahead or about anything other than the task at hand when it involves the dishwasher door, knives, or anything hot--stove, oven, dishes, pans
• to move with slow deliberateness always

[This is one of the posts going up retroactively after the weeks long unintended hiatus that began the week after July 4th.  See She's Back for more detailed explanation.]

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Sunday Serenity #395 Running Blind

See Joy Run

Running was once one of my passions and I thought for years that because I was so severely visually impaired now I would never run again.  But I learned that it was possible with a running partner and a safe location so in January I put it on my Bucket List.

Then in April I shared with my 2nd cousin's wife (a runner) about my running history and she offered to take me running after she finished the May half marathon she was training for.

Finally last weekend I shopped for running shoes.

Today Mary took me out to the west Longview dike to run.

Well, run-walk.  And it might have been first cousin if not sibling to jogging. I could not sustain the sprints past 30 seconds. Which is just a guess.  I just know they were short.  50-70 paces maybe.  But several of them over the nearly mile long stretch.

Baby steps.

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Open the Eyes of My Heart

Blind and Autistic Singing Praise Music

Words can add little value to this video.  Just watch.

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How Helen Keller Found Her Voice

What a YouTube Treasure!

Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan on a newsreel

demonstrating how Helen learned to speak.

Her first spoken sentence was a gem 

I have been fascinated with Helen Keller's story ever since 6th grade when I read her autobiography.  Which was long before I'd seen either of the Miracle Worker films.  Maybe visual impairment was already on my radar because of growing up watching my grandmother deal with hers but I don't have a specific memory of that being why I picked up the autobiography.

I do remember how enthralled I became with her story of coming out of a cave-dark, chaotic and silent world ruled by fear and anger into a love-bright, word-ordered world rooted in companionship, gratitude and hope.

That book may have also been the beginning of my obsession with words and language--their meaning, etymology, grammar, origins, translation, language acquisition and so on.

Imagining that little girl unable to see or hear and having no vocabulary had me thinking at age 12 about the role words have in the creation of reality.  What was a thing or an action or a thought if it had no name?

That Zen Koan I encountered much later asking if the tree falling in the forest where no ear could hear made a sound, probably had less of an impact on me after having contemplated whether things without names had any thingness at all or whether the namer and the named had a special bond or whether the namer created the thing by naming it?

Except that didn't fit the Bible story of Adam naming the animals after God created them.  But still I wondered how they could have been nameless from the moment of their creation until the moment Adam named them.  How could their creator not know their names? Which led to wondering whether God's name for them and Adam's had been the same one.  Then there was the concern that they might have their own names for themselves...

Yes, I often turn my brain into a pretzel with thoughts like these and experience it as pleasure.  Go figure.

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With Ears for Eyes..

...the World's his Symphony.

Oskar was born without eyes.  He was six weeks old when brought to his new forever home where they introduced him to toys with bells...

Just watch.  Words can't do it justice.

Then, if you're as inspired as I was, go on over to their YouTube channel and watch him grow up and have adventures with his housemate Klaus.

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Graceful She Is Not

Facepalm sometimes says all that needs saying.

I fell over the dishwasher door again this evening.

I was on duty from lunch time to bedtime today as Mom did not go to my brother's for the weekend as she was in too much pain.  The doctor prescribed hydrocodone and this was the first day taking it.  I was standing right beside the dishwasher in the process of loading the dinner dishes when I heard Mom call "Good night" from the hall.

I suddenly remembered I needed to work out with her a way for her to find the already split pills in the middle of the night and make sure she understood there needed to be four hours between doses.  I also needed to get a report from her on how she felt--pain level and any possible side effects.

With that thought I turned and took one step to my right--or tried to--and tumbled across the bottom rack holding big pans, dinner dishes, bowls and silverware surfing it to the floor on the other side.

The racket was horrendous.  Like a thunderstorm in a tin bucket.

But nothing was broken.  Not on the dishwasher. Not on the dishes in the rack.  Not on me.

But oh boy are there a lot of sore spots. The worst at this moment seems to be the hard ridge along the bottom of my right palm and the wrist--mouse and crochet hook hand.  It's going to be a rough couple of days.

The second worst pain isn't from that accident but the one I had while fixing dinner.

I dropped a few zucchini chunks on the floor while scraping them off the cutting board and bent down to pick them up smacking my forehead on the cutting board hard enough Mom heard the thwack from her recliner in the living room.

I had to sit down with an ice pack for ten minutes before I could proceed with dinner.  Nearly knocked myself out.

But it's not the pain from the knot on my forehead nor the headache that still lingers that competes with the fallout from the fall over the dishwasher.  Its the pain from the whiplash to my neck.  And I'm not sure it doesn't win first place.

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Sunday Serenity #361

Two weeks ago I began a 'My Bucket List' series for Sunday Serenity.   I will keep the linked list of the preceding ones at the bottom of the post.

I forgot to clarify in the first that my bucket list has a different criteria than the common 'things I want to do before I die'  for me it is 'things I want to do before I loose the rest of my vision'

My Bucket List

#3 Swim with dolphins

Ever since I was about 11 and saw my very first color TV episode which happened to be Flipper, I've loved the idea of swimming with a dolphin.  Then in the late 90s I had a vivid dream of frolicking with them in the ocean.  The scene was so suffused with intense bright color and emotions of serenity, bliss and joy I woke myself up laughing out lout with tears streaming into my ears.

Ever since that dream has been a touchstone of happiness and a symbol of joy for me.  And therefore a symbol of my true self. That intensified my desire to a nearly obsessive level.

The images in the video are gorgeous but the story being told gives me pause about my dream as it depicts dolphins living in captivity as being homesick, sad, bored and deprived of the essence of being who they are.  Which requires the freedom to swim free in the deep, wide ocean and be in community with their family and friends.

Other than in that dream, I never pictured swimming with wild dolphins in the ocean. I doubt I have either the strength or the swimming skills to swim in the ocean.  Add in my visual impairment and it seems impossible to imagine.  And now I feel guilty picturing doing so with captive dolphins at a resort or aquarium.

But I can't cut loose the dream either.

My Bucket List

#1 Hot Air Balloon Ride
#2 Play on a real drum set

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Sunday Serenity #325

Us Summer 2011

I'm going to do something I rarely do here and post a full face picture of myself.  This in honor of the fact that all of my serenity and joy of the last week is wrapped up in what this pic represents.  It was taken of Ed and I at Rice Hill OR where he'd met my sister and I to transfer my stuff from her car to his Dad's car upon my return from the  May-August visit at Mom's in Longview.  When I'd gone for Mother's day and stayed for my niece's wedding in July and my sister Jamie's surgery in August.

Anyone following my blog this month will know that we nearly split the week of Valentine's but managed to stop the bleeding of our broken hearts before they bled out via some intense email exchanges.  Then this past Thursday my sister drove me down after more of my stuff I'm going to need for the extended stay at Mom's and Ed and I had some intense face-to-face encounters that began the healing process.

My extended stay in Longview is for tending to a health crisis brought on by loss of my meds after we lost health insurance through Ed's job.  So I'm staying here where my sister can be advocate, phone contact and chauffeur as I get the necessary help and until something can be established back home to carry it forward once I'm stabilized again.

I have mentioned my various health issues here in the past but do not dwell on them nor feature them very often.  I will break that tradition now as my life is becoming an exercise in getting healthy and independent so that I can step up as full and equal partner with my husband and I can't imagine continuing to blog daily if I try to keep all of this private.

For now I will just list the issues:

I'm legally blind due to Retinitis Pigmentosa aka RP aka Tunnel Vision. This is a degenerative eye disease that takes the night vision first (my teens) then a progressive loss of peripheral vision (my twenties with legal blindness reached by age 27) and finally encroaches on the central vision (I've lost so much of the central in my left eye I can no longer read with it and it is closing in on the right as well)

My blood pressure was in the range of 220/120 when I finally started treatment in 2006 which was life threatening not to mention the risk of stroke that could take language from me.  It took a combination of four meds to get it under control and since last August I'd been taking only one or two at any one time as we tried to stretch a month's supply into six weeks or two month's.

I have a mood disorder that includes severe anxiety issues especially social anxiety along with episodes of severe depression.  All of that accompanying severe insomnia to the point I often go days without sleeping at all or weeks with sleeping less than four hours at a time. And the when is all over the clock.  The artist of the cat naps I am.  I went off the meds for this last August and thought I was coping but apparently nobody else thought so and once this latest crisis hit it became obvious to me as well.  The clinic my sister took me to is going to screen me for bi-polar next month before restarting the meds which probably won't be the same ones as before as my sister mentioned that she didn't think they were all that excellent.

I am also overweight by maybe 60-70 pounds now.  I've lost about 50 in the last three years that has come off without going back on.  I've come down from a size 24/26 to a size 18/20.

Additionally I have dizziness and balance issues, joint pain, significant loss of hearing accompanied by loud ringing in the ears and a mouth full of rotten teeth.

My sister is actually excited about the prospect of getting my health overhauled.  I wasn't feeling real cooperative about it at first but am now on board.

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Full of It.

Just pulled ahead on NaNo.  Need only 1112 words to finish and could probably get them before I go to bed but don't know if I will.

The words are there but they are full of it.  There seems to be less story this year and more musing about the story.  More rambling, digressions, and more indigestion making messes.

Like something made in a pot with leftovers.

But the words are there.  So maybe I can make something of them eventually.

Yesterday I roasted a whole chicken in our new crock pot my sister got us and today I made chicken soup from the leftovers.  Added the leftover green beans from Thanksgiving dinner, the leftover baby carrots from our car snacks last week, the leftover noodles from Ed's Sunday spaghetti which was the meal that inaugurated the crock pot.  Salt, pepper, garlic power and jalapeno pickle juice to spice it.

While dishing it up I slopped a ladle full over the finger of my left hand holding the bowl up to the pot.  Good thing it had been on low for over an hour at that point.

I guess i'm going to have to stop holding the containers I am pouring or dishing hot stuff into.  The tunnel vision is now to the point I can't see the entire rim of a cup when holding it or the entire large ladle let alone the whole bowl.

I know this but I still prefer to hold the bowl up to the pot when dishing up things that might splatter or spill.  But I think wiping up a little mess would be preferable to putting up with fingers that feel sunburned for several days.  Or worse.

This is going to slow down the crocheting as the finger that controls the thread is affected and I'm sure is not going to love having that thread drug across it for hours on end.

Speaking of crochet.  I finished another of the 8 strips of 11 squares today on the Secret Santa project.  Was all excited until I got out the first one finished last October and discovered the second one is both narrower and shorter.  Shorter by over 4 inches which is supposed to be the size of the squares.

[Picture of Charlie Brown with wide open mouth.]  Arrrrrrrrrrgh!

This is the kind of problem that tends to make me set a project aside indefinitely but I do not have that luxury as I have to have it done by Christmas or even a few days before.  So one way or another I have to make this work inside of three weeks.

Just for kicks while taking pics of the soup I snapped this one of the coffee pot I talked about so much this week.  Almost didn't post it when I saw the smudges on it in the photo which I could not see on the pot itself.

That's typical of my eyes these days.  I see more in the photos taken of something then in the thing itself in real life.

So that's the coffee pot I brewed six tanks of cleaning solution and two tanks of plain water through on Monday.  This brought it back to life.  The dispenser had stopped working and so we had to take the grounds out of the top and lift the bucket out to pour coffee and this tended to make terrible messes all over the counter and stain the counter.  Ed had been planning to buy a new one but when my sister looked at it last week she thought maybe it only needed a good internal cleansing.

It wasn't good enough to just brew the cleaning solutions through and then dump the bucket though.  To fix the dispenser I also had to make it deliver the fluid into the cup. So for every full pot of 'brew' I pulled out two or three cups through the dispenser before dumping the bucket.  In thee beginning it took over fifteen minutes to fill a cup but by the end it took only 7 seconds.

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Do Our Screens Steal Our Dreams?

Image of my screen as I work on this post

Tablet Light May Affect Sleep By Suppressing Melatonin:

'via Blog this'

Assuming the light from the tablet devices is the same or similar to that from my netbook, could this explain my two 33-37 hours awake cycles in the past week?

I spend at least 12 hours per day with my eyes glued to this screen.  Reading/Research.  Writing/Blogging.  Surfing.  Streaming Videos.  News Pods. Solitaire/misc games. Data Base/Spread Sheet. Graphics/Photo.  Mind Map.  Facebook.  Email.  Chat....

But in my case, due to my visual impairment, the advice to dim the screen (and elsewhere I've read dim the room lights) in the two hours before time to sleep is next to impossible to follow.  It leaves me without much to do with that time besides stare into space.  Meditate maybe.  Daydream?  Pray?

For in order to move about the room or the house I need it well lit. By which I mean a minimum of 100wats.

Maybe light is warding off sleep but I don't sleep very well after the jarrings I take like the one a couple weeks ago when I ran into the wall trying to navigate the living room without turning on the light or smashing my shin into the open dishwasher door or stubbing my toe on a chair leg.

This is a quandry.  What can one do for two hours that doesn't involve light?

One possible concept that just came to me would be to use the time for writing with the application screen colors set to cyan letters against dark blue background which was my favored setting on my very first word processor.

And that just prompted me to check the options on my calibre ereader and I can have that same cyan on blue.  Or any other light text on dark background combo.  I will check the options on the Kindle for PC next time I open it.

Any other suggestions?

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Where's the Nap Attacks When You Need Them?

Excuse me but this is going to be a ramble and rant post as sleep deprivation has lowered my inhibitions as effectively as a double shot of Kaluha and Cream. I have just pulled my first wake-around-the-clock stunt since I got here almost two weeks ago. I guess it was bound to happen but it caught me by surprise. I didn't feel it coming. I'd been feeling pleased with myself for sticking fairly close to a wake up between 10 and 11 AM and asleep between 2 and 3AM schedule. Now I'm not only ticked at myself for blowing that schedule all to hello and back but I'm having the morning after regrets, wondering how it is I think I'm capable of managing a web-based business, a bookstore or a writing career let alone all three whether in some combination or consecutively when it takes me 2 to 6 hours to complete an online transaction involving money.

Last night I started a task that I expected would take me no longer than four hours tops and hopefully more like 2.5. I began at 10 PM. The task was to activate the pre-paid, reloadable card my husband sent me and then go spend some of it on Joann.com to take advantage of a 30% off sale on crochet thread, floss, and ribbon coupled with free shipping.. Scrapbooking supplies too but that's not my current craft, though it looks to be the kind I could love.

OK Joy get back on track. You don't need any more hobbies.

I was excited at the thought of getting to plug several more holes in my thread rainbow. I'd been waiting since February for another $5 flat rate shipping offer to land in my inbox. That was when I acquired 8 hard-to-find colors. I had been drooling over them for months but could not justify ordering them when the shipping costs would add anywhere from a third to a half again to the cost of each ball of thread. In February I got 8 balls at their regular price of 2.49 to 2.79 apiece for a total of a little less than $20 plus the $5 shipping fee that added only 62 cents to the cost of each ball. Before their standard shipping was $5 for the first $10 of product ordered then it jumped to $7 something when your order went over $10 and $10 when it went over $20 and so on and on. I rounded some of those numbers up or down because I can't remember them exactly just the approximate range.

This time I ordered 17 items (15 assorted crochet thread balls) and that $5 flat rate would have added only 29 cents to each item. But the day after I received the email announcing the $5 flat rate and after I had discovered the 30% off sale but before the prepaid card was delivered, another email from Joann.com announced FREE shipping and an extension of the sale that was supposed to end Wednesday through to Saturday. After finding that email I spent several hours fretting over whether the card would arrive in time. If the offers had not been extended then the card would have had to arrive that day and I would have had to activate it and compile my order by midnight. Which was in the realm of the improbably knowing my propensity to make 30 minute tasks into 300 minute tasks. But knowing the card was supposed to have gone in the mail Monday afternoon I had little hope that it would reach me by Wednesday afternoon anyway. Yet the card did arrive late Wednesday afternoon after all as Ed had sent it UPS but by then I'd seen the announcement of the extended deadline so I didn't rush to tend to it that night. I'm glad I wasn't up against that midnight deadline as I probably couldn't have made it. I found the card just before needing to start dinner prep and was not free to tend to it until after 8PM but I also need to tend to that day's post.

So on Thursday I made sure to get my post up in the afternoon and then had my night session after Mom went to bed to tend to the card and the order. See I had never taken care of either of these tasks completely by myself before. I always had my husband there to walk me through it, to direct my eyes to the right place on the screen, to explain the jargon, to dictate the strings of numbers and so forth. Because of my visual impairment these tasks are tedious and slow and most commercial websites do not consider the issues I have and how their page design might detract or enhance my experience in dealing with their company or product. If they did they wouldn't be using 6pt font in gray on cream or cream on chocolate Talk about the fine print. If they gave a care at all about my issues they wouldn't have their form pages time out in two minutes for security reasons so that I end up having to start over at the beginning over and over and over. I finally make it past page one and complete page two only to have it reject my submission and go back to page 1 because my session had timed out while I read the instructions and filled in the form. This happened multiple times on each page and there must have been at least 7 to 10 of them.

And each time I ended up back on page one I was socked in the eye with the 20 pt font shouting 'Congratulations and Thank you for choosing 'dippity doo da' card. You are just minutes away from enjoying the blippity blah blah bleh.'

So. See? They have noting against 20pt font. They're perfectly willing to use it when it doesn't even matter to the ease or integrity of doing business with them.

What slows me down the most is the need to keep changing the focus of my eyes between the screen, keyboard and whatever object has the info I need to copy. Finding the right spot on the screen to input the info is difficult and keeping track of it once I know the vicinity to aim my eyes is a challenge. Especially when I or someone else inadvertently cause the screen to scroll. Like a helpful kitty nudging my elbow as I'm navigating the page with the mouse. Because I use the page enlarge function of the browser I need to scroll sideways nearly as often as up and down.
_______________________

Well. I had to break off at 5:30 to prep and have dinner with Mom. I came back and sat down again about 7 only to notice the sound of the sprinkler going in the back yard still. I had set it at 2 and meant to turn it off at 4. When I got out back it looked at first like either I was seeing double or someone had set up a second sprinkler. But I finally figured out the second geyser of water was shooting straight up out of a slit in the hose and reaching the level of the windows on the upper floor. I had to walk through the spray to reach the spigot.

That was just one of the many things that happened to me today as a result of inattention. The inattention being the result of sleep deprivation which was due to my not laying down at all because I didn't get my order form successfully submitted at Joann.com until after Mom was awake and up after 7:30. Remember I started activating the prepaid card before 10 PM

Now Mom is asleep again already and I'm still up and can't lay down until I get a shower. Today was litter box duty up and down stairs...Don't ask. Suffice to say it was one of those things I alluded to above and I should have got a shower before starting dinner but Mom's stomach seems to be on a schedule so I just washed my hands up to my elbows and a few inches further and by 'washed' I mean something akin to what a surgeon does before entering the OR. Everything but hold my hands in the air and let the water drip off my elbows onto the floor.

When I started this post I had thought I'd talk about some of the things I ordered and maybe even filch a pic or two off Joann.com. I'm so excited about it. It's fifteen new colors, including four variegated and three different weights and texture of thread and there are two tools to aid in the bookmark making project as well. But that will have to wait. Maybe even until the day it arrives here in a week or so when I can take the pictures my own self. I am going to hit that shower now and after that I'm down for the count.

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Tired Eyes

and other things...

Pictured are my perscription bi-focals and the magnifying visor and clip-ons that I use while doing close work. The clip-ons I alse use while using the computer as neither section of mybi-focals work for that particular distance--the screen is too far away for the bottom and too close for the top.

This wasn't the post I planned. I was going to post pictures of the crocheted bookmarks I've made this past week--four more since the one I mailed to my MIL the last week of April. I'm about to start my sixth. They take a couple hours now and I think I can soon get that down to one--especially for the shorter ones.

Sometime tomorrow I may be switching off crochet for some part of each day though to work on an embrodery project that has to be done before I leave here. I'm to embroder a sweat-pea vive on the front of one of Mom's favorite sweaters that my sister accidentally spoiled a couple years ago by bleaching the color out of several small spots while trying to get a stain out. My sister has drawn the vine and flowers on tissue paper and pinned it to the sweater, placing a leaf or bloom over each of the bleached out spots. I'm to embroder over the tissue paper.

I wish she could have got it prepared for me in time for me to get the stitching done in time for Mother's Day but things have just recently calmed down enough for her to add extra little projects to her already stuffed daily schedule. And I still had to make a date with her several days in advance to go over the pictures and designs of sweat pea vines that I'd downloaded over six weeks ago.

I made dinner by myself tonight so she could keep working on drawing the pattern and pinning it in place.

After dinner she went grocery shopping and I went out on my mini-tramp which is on the front porch and just the other side of the wall Mom's recliner is by so I could hear if she called or used her cane to tap the wall. My nephew was also down the hall in the office on the computer. Mom spent that hour watching TV and reading her large print Reader's Digest.

I spent over an hour on the tramp. I tried to crochet while doing the gentle warm-up movements but couldn't synchronize the two so was either making mistakes or pausing the steps. It's just as well since I then switched to reading the novel I set aside Saturday night. The warm-up and cool-down at the beginning and end and between short aeirobic sessions is when I get to do most of my fiction reading.

Earlier today Mom went for a walk down the block with her cane escorted by my nephew. I tokk pictures. Was thinking of posting them tonight instead of the ones of the bookmarks since at least they've already been taken but they are still on my camera and would need editing for posting and I'm just too tired.

Plus I've got to be up and alert earlier than usual tomorrow. It's Wednesday, the day my sister and nephew go to Vancouver, he to spend time with his best friend, the son of my sister's best friend from high school and she to spend a little time with her friend but also to do a major Costgo grocery shop. This is a weekly thing and I'm on duty with Mom for the durration. Which is usually noonish to tenish.

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Blue

more animals
Not having a good day. Did not finish The Story of Edgar Sawtelle in time to participate in the Oprah.com webcast with the author this evening. I wore my eyes out trying, reading over two hundred pages in the last twenty-four hours, but I still had over 100 to go when it was time to log in to the webcast. I logged in anyway but never put the earbuds in my ears to listen in. I sat beside my silenced laptop and continued to read, glancing up at the screen every now and then to see the visuals of the intense discussion going on.

I'll get to see in once they put it in archives later this week. Or at least I'm assuming they will do that again as they have with previous webcasts. But it won't be qiute the same as being part of the live event. Even though I'm always just a lurker--just listening and watching--it still feels so powerful to know you are participating in a discussion with thousands of people in dozens of countries around the world--everyone of whom has been profoundly impacted by the same story. It won't be the same watching the recording but at the last minute I decided that maintaining the integrity of the experience of reading the story to the end without the spoilers and the outside influence on my own reaction to the story was more important.

Part of what is bumming me today is having had to face the limitations of my vision issues as I pushed beyond the comfort zone into the distress zone and realized that this is probably the best I can hope for seeing how motivated I was and how hard I was trying and then comparing my results with what I used to do and with my current ambitions. I sat up reading all night last night from eleven Sunday night to eight Monday morning. The last hour or so I had been using the visor magnifier that I use for fine needlework and it was making me motion sick.

There are other things adding to my mood. I think I'm homesick. Missing Ed and Merlin. Missing my routine. Missing my large tracks of time for contemplation, research, daydreaming and writing. I've no place to be alone here without fear of interruption except in the bathroom and out on my mini-tramp. Which all wouldn't be so bad if I felt that I was actually being useful. But I'm feeling like I'm not contributing enough to compensate for the extra work my being here adds to my sister's agenda.

It probably didn't help that I didn't go out on the tramp today. I procrastinated too long and it got dark and the evening family routines kicked in--helping with dinner prep and cleanup is one of the things I contribute. A tramp workout might have helped alleviate my mood but I didn't think of it that way at the time I was just feeling lethargic about it. Unmotivated.

Then there was the bad news I got from home when I talked to Ed Sunday afternoon. Dizzy the kitten that adopted the family there last summer, hiding under the porch until Merlin coaxed her out, and then winning our hearts with her antics, was found dead under the rose bushes Saturday afternoon. Not a mark on her.


For more about Dizzy and the joy she brought us click the photo or her name.

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Yipee Ki Yi Yay

I made the NaNo 50,000 before noon today but I'm waiting until tomorrow to upload to the verifier as I've still got to transfer it into a text file and then scramble it. I wasn't in a hurry to get that done today because when I input my word count for yesterday at just after 11PM my time, the scripts at NaNo credited it to today which left me with another zero showing for yesterday. The same thing had happened to me the first week when I input my word count just after 9PM my time and that quite frustrated me since I was scrupulous to not start writing until after midnight on the first day and was assured that I had until midnight on the 30th to verify. A couple of weeks later though I input after ten and got credit for the still current day. So I relaxed. Then this happened last night.

I decided early today that I wouldn't worry about updating my word count today at all because, for one thing, whose gonna believe that total of near 7K for a single day? And for another I hoped to get one scene polished enough to input into the excerpt form at NaNo finally and then use it for my Friday Snippet this evening also. That project was going quite well all afternoon and evening but its still not quite ready to post.

I'm not getting nearly enough return on investment of minutes to warrant continuing to force it. This is due in part to having had only three hours of sleep this morning because I could not go back to sleep after Ed woke me up to tell me to relax about going after our glasses today because his Dad was going to drive him over to pick up both pair and then drive him to work before returning here with mine. I was just too excited to go back to sleep. I had them before eight-thirty. For the first several hours I was silently singing 'I can see! I can see! I can see!' I was able to change the font I was working with for my NaNo story from 20pt down to 12pt. I discovered I could read some of my most important reference materials without a magnifying glass again. I tested a page in The Historian, the novel I was reading for the Read-a-Thon in October and so demoralized me then when I found my reading speed had slipped below 20 pages per hour from the better than 50 of six years ago.

But by mid afternoon things were not so thrilling. I was suffering what amounted to motion sickness brought on by my efforts to focus and refocus between screen, keyboard and reference material through the unfamiliar bifocals. I also lost a lot of time to attempts to reorganize my workspace to find a better level for the screen so that I wouldn't have to point my nose at the ceiling in order to focus through the lower part of the lenses.

I lost even more time to an exploration of a baby name site to look for a new last name for my male POV. I've been unhappy with it almost from the get go but hadn't wanted to take the time to look for another one. It is one of those things I can easily spend all day contemplating and researching and I was deliberately denying myself the right to indulge that little fetish. But when I chose one of his POV scenes to showcase and began working on it this morning, I just couldn't keep typing 'Professor Simons' it wasn't clicking for me. I couldn't bond with him. I considered going with his middle name, Palmer, as his last. That almost worked but I had reasons for wanting his last name to reflect either his Italian or Jewish heritage. After more than an hour I found this: Carmelo is pronounced kar-MAY-loh. It is of Italian and Hebrew origin, and its meaning is "fruitful orchard; garden". Biblical place name: refers to Mount Carmel in Israel, which is referred to in ancient writings as a kind of paradise. What better name for a man who has made Dante's Divine Comedy the focus of his life? There are actually several reasons this name and it's meanings mesh right in with the fabric of this story, thematically and otherwise.

Since settling on that around two this afternoon, I was able to make quite good progress on a rewrite of one of Professor Graham Palmer Carmelo's scenes. I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent in his company too. This is the way I keep anticipating the whole month of NaNo will be like and then get horribly dispirited when there are only there or four days like this out of the entire thirty.

There is a very good chance I can have this scene ready to post by early afternoon tomorrow. That is if I can get some solid rejuvenating sleep first.

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Friday Snippets 19

I'm late getting my snippet up again this week.

Sigh.

This time it was due to an eye doctor appointment this morning which meant that I couldn't stay up all night last night preparing the post and then visiting. I thought I would be able to get to work on it when we got home but I had not bargained on having dilated eyes. And then we had company this evening.

I chose this snipped today for several reasons. First because it features a woman living with visual impairment and that's been on my mind this week because of the upcoming eye doctor visit. Also because it features a woman in her late forties feeling sorry for herself because of her passing youth and disability and that was also a feature of my week as I said a final good-bye to my late forties on Tuesday.

I wrote this while still in my mid thirties. It is a short story and I almost posted the whole 2369 words. But I decided to split it in two.

Oh, another reason I selected this story for now is that the character, Marion, has popped up as a supporting character in two of my Fruit of the Spirit novels so far and I am leaning hard toward using her in Spring Fever, my NaNo novel this year. Which would essentially bring Spring Fever into the Fruit of the Spirit fold. I don't know if I ever intend to give her her own novel but her profession as a trauma psychiatrist comes in real handy.

How Does Your Garden Grow?
by Joy Renee

Marion traversed the dark hall her fingertips lightly brushing the velvety tulips on the wallpaper. One by one she touched them, counting as she went. Ten between her room and the door to the kitchen. She could see them as clear as day in her mind. A dark, nearly black purple regimented on a field of succulent green. She had helped her mother hang the paper near thirty years ago and been so enamored with it she had recreated its charm in the yard surrounding this house.

Acres of grass kept more perfectly groomed than putting greens framed a dozen flower beds where a prize purple tulip stood at attention for one month of every year. The only thing to spoil the effect was her neighbor Clay Quincy’s insistence on growing a variety of flowering vines on the fence between their properties. All spring, summer and fall there was an effusion of vibrant color cascading over her fence. She was sure he took a perverse delight in spoiling her creation. He had once referred to it as evidence that even psychiatrists were not proof against neurosis.

Marion left the narrow confines of the hallway, keeping a hand on the doorjamb to get her bearings before stepping into the wilderness of her house. Use a cane? In the house I grew up in? I know it like I know myself. But she often turned back to her room and waited for Ernestine to see to her. Her daughter--raising a daughter of her own, while nurturing a radio talk-show--saw to her mother’s needs with barely a hitch in her lockstep.

Light inhabited the cavernous kitchen like a dragon its lair, slashing at Marion’s eyes. She blinked rapidly behind splayed fingers until her eyes adjusted to brightness, listening to Ernestine fix breakfast--the tinkle of metal against glass (a fork stirring eggs in a bowl?) the clang of metals (a pan being lidded?) the percussion of cupboard and fridge doors, the jangle of utensil drawers. Across the room, Verna croons counterpoints of contentment to her dolls.

Marion was emerging from a winter’s mourning for dimming eyes and withering womb--a double whammy. Though her resolve to contribute no more defective genes was twenty years old--the age of her widowhood--menopause at forty-eight seemed as much a failure as failing eyes.
No matter what Clay said. Clay Quincey, an EMT, spent off duty days making pottery and courting Marion with patient perseverance. She held him off with scrupulous decorum.

Except her scruples went the way of her eyes and ovaries last fall, during a week spent hiking on the coast. They began in separate sleeping bags but confronted with the depth of their friendship, Marion found her grounds for naming their relationship inappropriate, shaky as the sand at sea’s edge. With Clay’s whispers in her ears relentless as the surf, their bags were zipped together. Then Clay proposed again.

"What objections are left?" He brushed her bangs back to plant a kiss. "Time dissolved most of them. Your mother’s been gone five years. And I never thought she’d object."

Marion hid her face against his shoulder. "She never saw you as a suitor. You saw how she treated them."

"Because she feared they’d take you away, which I wouldn’t have. Since age fourteen I did chores and errands for her, and escorted her about. She treated me like a surrogate son."

"Your eighteen to my twenty-eight made it impossible for her to see you as more than surrogate kid brother for me."

"Two decades has lessened the shock-value of that if not proved my commitment." He tightened his arm about her.

"I never doubted your commitment. Just the wisdom of it. Age difference aside, I wouldn’t deny you the delight of having your own children and they couldn’t be mine."

"I don’t want to father children who can’t have you for a mother. I’d have been content as step-father. I felt like father enough the night Neal was born. Almost delivered him myself! If the paramedics had been five minutes longer…"

"The night you found your vocation." Marion remembered the gray-faced boy kneeling beside her in as much awe of the life-savers as the life giver.

"And my heart." His hands cupped her cheeks. "Two callings which I never repented."

"I know." She caressed his lips with her thumb.

He caught his breath. "So how can you still object?"

"How can I subject you to the burden of an old blind lady?

"The same way you do Ernestine."

"That’s different. I cared for my mother as she did hers. She needs to be home anyway. Her Drew flew the coop."

He gripped her shoulders. "So let her and the kid have the house and move in with me. With your career you needn’t follow tradition and be so dependent. Doesn’t take good eyes to be a good listener. If maneuvering clinic and hospital mazes is too much, I got room for you to set up at home."

"You make it sound fated." She laid her cheek on his chest to feel his heartbeat.

"It always was." He kissed her with long-denied urgency.

Today she blushed to think that she and seriously considered his proposal for several weeks after their return home. Until symptoms of menopause consumed her thoughts and nibbled away her courage. His call this morning had penetrated her self-absorption. "You, a trauma shrink, hiding from life?" a vulnerability in his voice had twisted the knife in her guilt. Time to end his agony. Better to ruin a friendship than the rest of his life. Today she was off to Clay’s for a long-postponed pottery lesson. Where she would firmly put their relationship back into the safe zone of friendship.

Marion eased one foot forward, reaching for the table, its mahogany surface a splash of shadow against pale linoleum and cerulean walls. Her fingers followed the edge to the south window-wall, where plants of a variety of shape and hue sat on shelves and hung from the ceiling. She took a mister among them, bestowing halos of mist, fingers brushing lightly the vines and leaves, hovering over blossoms as she inhaled an ecstasy of life.

She knelt beside a fern growing vigorously from a glazed pot, hands halting over a cluster of wilted fronds. "Feeling poorly today?" She probed its soil and sniffed her fingers. "OD’d on water, poor thing."

"Is Fern sick today Mare-Mare?" Verna asked in a sick-room whisper.

"Might say so. Sometimes too much of a good thing is worse than too little. She’s got a little root rot. Best leave her be for a bit." she set the mister down and stood, wiping gritty fingers on her denim skirt and adjusting her black T-shirt’s seams. It fit snugger this spring than last. The winter had laid more than heavy thoughts on her.

"Hmmmm." Ernestine approached, "Your grunge-work get-up." Silver letters across the chest read: Down and Dirty. "I see you’re up and about."

"So you do and so I am. Up to no good and about to be caught." She winked at Verna.

"Go wash up you two. I’m about to set the table."

"I’m about washed-up already." Marion mimed a morose look in an imaginary mirror and giving herself a finger face-lift made a face at Verna, who squealed and ran for the hall.

"Verna Ruth! Walk!" Ernestine commanded. "Better yet, come help Mare-Mare."

"No need. I may be washed-up but I’m not laid up." To prove it she stepped forwards without reaching for support. With the second confident step she grinned but the next instant her grin was plastered to the wall as one foot surged forward, surfing the waxed floor.

"Mother!" Ernestine lunged for her.

Marion watched the red slime slide past her eyes as her face floated down the sky-blue wall and the bright white floor drifted up, a fathomless cloud offering endless embrace….. Slugtrail slugabed snuginbed snugasa bugaboo bugout slugitout knockout knockabout knocked…

(to be continues next week)

ummm. If you can't wait until next week to see the rest, the entire story is posted over at Joywrite. The link is in the sidebar somewhere. I'm lazy. It's late And I have less than two hours to try to generate some NaNo word count for today. So I probably won't be making my visits until I've done that.

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Wilting

I've had three slow days in a row with my NaNo novel. I'm behind the pace by 3377 words, assuming the need to average 1666.6666 words per day. I'm a tad discouraged but not panicked yet since I've frequently surged ahead by over 3500 words in a single day on a story. But that kind of thing isn't the norm and I can't count on it. When it does happen, it usually follows a day or two of backing off to dream the scene(s), watching my characters move in their environment and interact with it and with each other. I can't afford very many such breaks in grinding out the words though. Especially with there being no guarantee that the surge of words will follow the fallow day.

It doesn't help that I'm fighting another headache either. This isn't quite of the migraine category yet but still... It might be eye-strain. I've taken the step of increasing the font size to 20pt to see if that might help. Of course, I won't be able to judge that until after I've rested my eyes and started fresh.

If some of these headaches of late are eye-strain related, I may be getting relief soon. I've finally got an appointment with an eye doctor. A week from Friday though, so it's not going to help me get through NaNo. Even the best scenario means that I'd be breaking in a new prescription during the last ten to fifteen days. There is always eyestrain involved in that too. And to make matters iffier I have to go with bifocals as our insurance only allows for one pair in two years so I can't have separate reading glasses.

I did not have a happy experience with bi-focals last time I tried them. They were fine for reading or for sewing while watching TV or for not having to choose between seeing your dinner plate or the face of your conversationalist across the table. But for walking about--not so fine. My tunnel vision seems to be encroaching faster from below than from the sides so I have to look down to see anything below the level of my nose. Looking down with bifocals while stepping off a curb was nearly as disorienting as stepping off a carnival ride. I use that analogy because I had bifocals when we moved to Sunnyvale, CA in 1999 and the following spring we bought season tickets to PGA (Paramount Great America) amusement park. It was a natural comparison.

One of my frustrations today is that my word count remains so low in spite of the fact that I have spent the majority of my waking hours focused on Spring Fever. Once again I've put every other thing in my life to the side to become submerged in the story world. I don't know whether to just accept this as the way I work most productively or to think of it as something that needs to change. I know such a working style would not be compatible if I had other pressing responsibilities: a day job, kids, a household of my own to run. But since I don't have any of those, maybe I should just go with it. On the other hand, I am starting to miss certain things. Like reading novels, watching movies, clean hair, and sleep.

And getting out of this room! It's been a week since I've been any further than the dinner table or the bathroom. I was considering passing on the weekly trip to the library this week because I've barely touched most of the books I brought home last week. One of them has become essential reference for my story world but the rest are just sitting there taunting me. I still haven't finished The Historian, the novel we own so bringing home more novels makes little sense. But Ed is down to three out of the seven I brought home for him and thus might not make it to next Monday without more. So now I'm thinking that I should try to go tomorrow, the last day the Phoenix branch is open this week. And if I wake up headache free I think I will wash my hair and head for the library.

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Thursday Thirteen #28

Thirteen Things I Will Not Miss About the Weekly Walk to the Library 1. These steps both coming and going. You can see they were measured by their builder with a ruler borrowed from Alice in Wonderland between her sips from the 'Drink me' bottles. Dragging a wheeled bag up or down them is an adventure in Wonderland. It's a wonder I still have an intact face. 2. This speed bump at the bottom of the hill at the entrance to the trailer park often catches me unawares. To my undoing. The hill itself is a daunting climb in the aftermath of a virus. Which occurred at least six times this winter. 3. At the top of the hill, turning onto Fern Valley Road, the two lane track that siphons traffic between I5 and Highway 99, I must squeeze myself and rolling book bag between a power pole and a chain link fence. 4. this is the stretch of Fern Valley Road looking back at the same power pole. As you can see there is no sidewalk. Mud and gravel is always clogging my book bag's wheels. Traffic is often bumper to bumper through here and on rainy days the unpaved area is usually a big mud puddle. 5. Still on Fern Valley Road, approaching the gas station on the corner. When the refueling truck is there it's back bumper is flush against the white line, forcing me to wait for a lull in traffic so I can get around it. The fumes leave me disoriented and dizzy if not outright gagging. 6. At the far side of the gas station after traversing the length of its lot whose edge is essentially one wide driveway bordering on Fern Valley Road which cars can enter or exit at any angle or speed that suits them. Now I must lift my rolling book bag over this curb and over the expanse of gravel to reach the wheelchair accessible ramp that surely can't be accessed by a wheelchair bound person coming from anywhere but the crosswalks themselves. Go figure. It is at this intersection that I am often forced to contend with a car stopped for the light with its bumper half into the crosswalk. I kept hoping it would happen on one of the three trips I took with the camera in the last two weeks so that I could get a picture of one and then make a dramatic point of taking another pic of its license plate. Beats giving their paint job the white cane treatment. 7. This is the corner cat-a-corner from the gas station after I've crossed both Hwy 99 and the shopping center driveway. Here I have just had to maneuver myself with bag and cane past this sign which has been placed across three quarters of the sidewalk, leaving maybe two feet between it and the curb. I've caught my cane on the struts or that brick weighting it down more than a few times, which jars my wrist and occasionally yanks it out of my hand. Again, wheelchair accessible ramps which hardly look accessible. Makes you want to find the persons with the bright idea and ask: What were you thinking? 8. I turned on a dime after taking the last pic to get this one. Now I'm headed down Hwy 99. This stretch is also know as the Main Street of Phoenix. This is one of the worst obstacle courses of the entire route and it's never the same twice. I will never understand why, with every other slot empty, someone insists on using the slot directly in front of the power pole and then hanging their bumper over the sidewalk. After getting past this, I must pass the bus stop. Though empty when this pic was taken, there can be a crowd there, along with their bikes, scooters and strollers. On the far side of the shelter is a trashcan which is never quite in exactly the same spot. A major nemesis for the visually impaired. 9. Two blocks beyond that bus stop is this street. On rainy days it is an archipelago of puddles, the largest in the gutter on this side is often several inches up the wheelchair ramp. There is a power pole just to my left which narrows the path. There is no signal. I keep forgetting that I need to stop and look behind me to check for any vehicles signaling a right-hand turn. A turn they can make without coming to a complete stop. That power pole can block our view of each other. I can't tell you how many times I've stepped off that curb only to feel the breeze made by a turning car directly in front or behind me. I wonder if any of them were as startled as I was. If they even saw me. 10. Directly across that street is this power pole sprouting, as they all do, from the middle of the sidewalk. This one is extra large and blocks the view of the sidewalk beyond. You never know what could be coming around it or from which side--bikes, scooters, wheelchairs, strollers, shopping carts, a clump of high-school kids under a haze of funky smoke. Directly on the other side is a large green metal box. To the right, that white curved shape you see is the edge of a propane tank. Beyond it is a driveway leading from the post office about half a block to the right, which is often used by delivery vans and patrons of the post office or that little shop visible there. 11. This is a couple of blocks further on but looking back the way I just came. This is one of three sets of these benches in a two block stretch. They are not bus stops. I guess they are intended as a place to rest. I never see anyone sitting on them. I don't wonder, what with the noise and fumes of the traffic whizzing by just a foot or two away. I have sat on them a few times when I was hard up for a rest but it is far from relaxing. They are an especially insidious obstacle, being of a color that blends with the cement and a height to sock me good in the gut if I walk into them full speed ahead. The loss of my peripheral vision is much worse on the bottom than the top or either side. 12. My white cane was made to fold up. But the elastic cord strung through its hollow sections has long since died, forcing me to tape the sections together. Which makes getting in and out of vehicles interesting unless I untape the middle section so I can fold it in half. Which weakens the tape. Which leads to this annoying tendency to come apart and go limp as a wet noodle on me at the worst possible moment. Like in the middle of a crosswalk? Or when testing the distance of pole or curb? It takes two hands to put it back together. But my other hand is almost always pulling a bag. In Snoopy's immortal words: Arrrgghh!! 13. And finally we reach the destination itself. You might be surprised to see the library pictured in a list of things I won't miss. Well, it is not the library per se. It is this old, musty building which has been our temporary quarters for the last ten months. The odor of mold is nasty strong on warm days. I tend to spend several days with a sore throat and sinus headache after exposure to it. Does the fact that I was willing to put up with all this and more nearly once a week for nearly six years give you an idea of how important having library access is to me? Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. amy 2. PresentStorm 3. Susan Helene Gottfried 4. Nancy J. Bond 5. Raggedy 6. Donna 7. L^2 8. Gattina 9. Jamie 10. Mercy's Maid 11. Daria (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

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