Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

“A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.”

—attributed to James Beard

 

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

This has been a very distracted period for me. A lot of health inconveniences going on in my life right now. Nothing major, thank God, but things have conspired to make me low energy and cruddy-feeling.

My chronic stomach condition has been especially bad since the first part of the year, making me feel extremely sluggish and ickoid most of the time. My vitamin D deficiency may be a contributing factor in this, hard to say. But the good news is! I started a new treatment a couple of weeks ago which (fingers crossed) seems to be working and I've got this great influx of new energy. I'm feeling better than I have in a long time. Hope that continues.

Also, I've been on an obnoxious low-iodine diet since March 6 in preparation for a full body scan on March 19. Although I've been cancer-free for decades, I have to do these scans every five or six years as a precaution. I have no reason to suspect this one will be anything other than routine, but you know how it is: there's always a little niggling doubt in the back of my mind. A side effect of being a What If girl, I guess.

So, the diet means no iodized salt, no dairy, no soy, several kinds of beans are out, no seafood, only six ounces of meat a day, organic chicken only (iodine is an important component of factory chicken feed),* and no prepackaged or canned anything. Everything has to be made from scratch to avoid the possibility of getting either iodized salt, or some seafood or soy additive. I actually don't eat a lot of prepackaged stuff anymore because of the stomach ailment, but it would be nice to be able to use canned tomato sauce, bottled mustard, store bought bread and cereal, et al., rather than having to work it from scratch. And man oh man, do I miss my dairy! Plus, I need it for the vitamin D shortage. Dude, it's been so horrible! I've had to drink black coffee! Like, ewww. And no lattes! How can one woman bear so much pain?!? (/irony)

One good thing: I've been able to eat potatoes. I'd largely eliminated them from my diet except as an occasional thing, but it was hard for me to feel full on this diet no matter how many fruits and veg I ate, what with the limited protein, so lentils (one of the few beans I can eat) and potatoes have figured prominently. Oh, and corn meal. The roommate has kindly been making a lot of low-fat corn muffins and corn bread and wheat bread from scratch. She is a saint amongst women and really made this all much more bearable. The good news! is that all this healthy eating has also helped with the stomach issues. I'm going to transition back into South Beach once I'm allowed to eat dairy again.

And even with the irritating diet, this process is ten gazillion times better than it used to be. I used to have to go off all thyroid medications for 2-3 weeks which made me sick as a dog. I'd have to take medical leave from work and lie around the house feeling sick and weepy and morbid (as opposed to my usual just morbid). Now they've developed a process that allows me to stay on the meds and be...well, as close to normal as I ever am.


*Actually, I may stick with the organic chicken. It tastes so much better. Plus, all those chemicals are pretty ick. Bristol Farms has turned out to be cheaper than Von's in the organics. Go figure.

It's been a week of small and petty challenges.

It started off last Friday when I began a special two week eating program to detox from sugar. I am, and I remain, cranky. I look forward to eating cereal again with a ferocity that's not to be believed. That was the same day my internet connectivity at home went away. It's still not back. I hope to have that problem solved by tomorrow afternoon, as I'm having a cable modem installed. For $10 less than the DSL was costing me. Even after the introductory offer is over, so that's a small victory. But if you don't hear from me over the weekend, you'll know what happened.

Oh, and yahoo has been eating my mail. So if you sent me something and I ignored you, I may not actually have gotten it.

That same Friday evening I got a phone call from my Visa Security and Fraud folks trying to confirm some purchases. Everything was cool until they got to the $500 charge at a Target in San Diego a few days before. Not made by me. I still had the card in my possession, so she explained a scam that's going around. Sales people, et al., she said, sell Visa numbers to scammers who make fake cards with fake IDs to go with them, then sell them on the black market. The sales clerk at Target was alert, apparently, and refused the charge, but the Security person assured me I wouldn't be libel for the charge in any case. It did mean I had to destroy the card and get a new one. This was the same account that was compromised in the Choicepoint hacking scandal a few years back. At the time, my instinct was to close the account and get a new one, but my bank assured me "it was highly unlikely" my account number would be compromised. Uh huh. Should have trusted my instincts on this one, although the Security person last Friday said it was "highly unlikely" that was how my number got out there. Uh huh. I think perhaps my bank/Visa didn't want to go to the expense of closing accounts and opening new ones.

When we mentioned this the next day to our neighbors across the street, they'd had the same scam run on them. Also in San Diego—which does make me wonder about that hotbed of crime and vice to the south. Get this: a guy went into a bank, slapped down his fake Visa and said he'd like $500 in cash. The bank duly forked it over and he left. Apparently, he thought it was so easy he went back a little while later to the exact same branch and tried it again. That teller got suspicious this time and went to talk to the manager. The guy took off.

So my new Visa arrives last night. It looked like the envelope had been tampered with. That happens frequently with packages and interesting-looking mail in my neighborhood. I wonder if somewhere down the line I'll get another call from Visa Security and Fraud?

Then Amazon said my mother's birthday present wouldn't get to me until two days after her birthday, but it arrived last night, two days early. Which was a good thing. Except one of the books was not what Mom wanted. Oh well.

More doctor's visits for more petty annoyances. Nothing too bad, so I'm grateful. And I'm still alive, so I'm grateful. I remind myself, "This is what the living do." Which is also the name of one of my more favoritest poems of all time (and a wonderful book, too). You can read the title poem here, if you aren't poetry-averse:

http://www.blueflowerarts.com/mhowe.html

I am living. I am grateful. The petty sh*t just lets me know I'm still part of life—as much, maybe more so on some days—then the passion and the glory. And there are good and wonderful poems now and then to make me see the world fresh and be even more grateful to be amongst the living.


Random quote of the day:

"Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and shot it."

—Truman Capote


Thankfully, I haven't felt that way about most of mine. But there have been one or two...

Actually I was alternating between London Calling by the Clash and Shirley Horn, which is a strange combo to say the least, but I'm in an inclusive and expansive mood this evening, and the old and moldy stuff suited me fine.

And speaking of old and moldy, I rescued an old novel from the woodpile and decided to reacquaint myself with the research Bible I put together for it several years back.

Am I glad I had that notebook because I sure wouldn't want to read all those books again. They were interesting, but I'd rather press ahead with new books on the same subject. I'm studying Dark Ages Britain which I've been fascinated by ever since I read Rosemary Sutcliff's wonderful historical fiction when I was a kid.

I'm funny about research—if I'm dealing with a historical era, I want to get it as right as I can, even if I go off on fantastic plot tangents (as I usually do). So I will no doubt be obsessed about Dark Age Britain for awhile now. If anyone has any good books on the subject to recommend...

The old novel was one which stalled two novels ago, mainly because I realized my plot was not for a single novel but probably involved two or three—and I just did not want to do the trilogy thing at the time. I also realized certain plot points wouldn't work as conceptualized, but I'd done a ton of work on it. Hated to let that one go.

But as so often happens with me, the Backbrain Country worked on the story while the Forebrain Country worked on other things. The issues resolved themselves. And the novel would make am interesting follow on to the novel I'm currently marketing. Not a sequel, but taking one of the supporting players and making him the main focus. A rare foray into first person for me, but I couldn't see telling this story any other way. The character, Caius, seemed to demand it. I think I might even be up to doing a trilogy now. Have no idea how tough or not tough it will be to market such a thing, but by the time I finish writing the first novel the market could have changed several times anyway, so what the hell?

Besides, as I said to a friend lately, you can't chase the market. That's rather like a dog chasing its own tail.

And on a non-writing note, I got a clean bill of health yesterday on a medical test I've been dreading for months. It was a follow-up to a major illness I had some years ago. They like to do a scan every five years just to make sure it hasn't come back. Neither my doctor nor I thought it had—I felt good, my blood tests were good—but even so, it preys on my mind every time we do one of these scans. The what if mindset is not a good one to possess when it comes to such things. I had to go on a very restricted diet the last couple of weeks before the test so there wouldn't be any conflict with the test and the first week I was obsessing over that, getting irritated and cranky as hell as a way, I realize now, of not thinking about the test. But this last week running back and forth to the doctor for shots and doses of stuff, I realized it was the test I was fretting over. But all done! I'm good to go for another five years and have been celebrating with good food.

And getting back to work, of course.