Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

“The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists in the circulation of their blood.”

—Logan Pearsall Smith, “Age and Death,” Afterthoughts



Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Jun 6
I do have the sweetest cat on the planet: I open her mouth, drop her thyroid pill in, and she swallows it. This morning, she even purred.

Jun 6
Anyone who tells me what I should do is probably full of horsesh*t.

Jun 8
Riding the back of a flying dragon defies the laws of physics, but it’s become an entrenched fantasy trope. And hey, dragons aren’t real, PJ. My own solution to the Dragon Problem was painfully ludicrous, and I’m the only one who thinks dragon-riding is a problem, so I should just give it up.

Jun 8
To think I once got really excited and emotionally involved by beauty pageants.

Jun 9
I suppose it could be construed as unprofessional that I am sitting at my desk popping my gum loudly.

Jun 10
I’m in the process of reinventing myself yet again, always a slow and painful process, but more so because I am so distracted. I wonder who I’ll wind up being this time?

Jun 10
Jawdropping map: The 74 school shootings since Sandy Hook. http://on.mash.to/1s4lz2O 

Jun 11
Bwoogity. I got rid of the Piers Anthony books a lifetime ago. I read them in junior high and thought something was off about them even then. Now Marion Zimmer Bradley is going into the recycling bin. I won’t inflict her on any library sale or Goodwill. Blech. http://tinyurl.com/kqhh9k5  and http://tinyurl.com/cf2uv3a 

Jun 12
A swarm of bees/wasps came in my mother’s bathroom window today. The beeman is on his way. WTF.

The bees had formed a colony in our attic. They are gone now. And we caught the wasp nest just in time. Life is exciting.

The “hilarious” part is that Mom sat there for 20 minutes wondering what that buzzing sound was. Flies, maybe. Thank God, no stings. We got lucky, considering she’s half-blind. She recognized the danger and got out of harm’s way in time.

The bees were back by evening. The bee man will be returning in the morning and my mom is sleeping on the futon.

Jun 13
The bees dealt with again this morning, vents sealed. Hopefully this will do it. I’m so stressed I’ve got hives. *rimshot* Gotta laugh. It’s a ridiculous situation. Terrifying in retrospect but we bumbled our way through.

Jun 13
Whatever you love has consequences.

Jun 14
Someone egged my car last night. The neighbor’s car next to it was untouched. Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get me. It’s a late model banged up Honda Civic and the neighbor’s car is spiffy and new. Such is life.

Jun 14
Dr. John Dee has shown up as a character in so much recent spec fic that he’s practically become a new fantasy trope.

Jun 15
That was fun. I sat on a cloth garden chair and kept right on sitting until I hit the ground. Guess I shouldn’t have let it winter outside.

Jun 16
Mom fell on the way to the door to let the medical transport guy in. She said she was okay and went to dialysis but it scared the crap out of me. Dealing with all this over the phone at work while the neighbors help her is nausea-inducing.

guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt

Jun 17
I was typing in my mother’s insurance company and spell check came up with “trickster.” Which is pretty appropriate now that I think about it.

Jun 17
Products I would like to see: InstaMan, for all your hefting and moving needs. Just add water!

Jun 19
If you describe yourself as having “clarity and courage” perhaps what you have is “smugness and self-absorption.”

Jun 20
Ironic (and unfortunate) Twitter juxtaposition. http://twitpic.com/e6kxdg 

Jun 20
On the 24 hour Dodger station Mom never knows if she’s watching a replay or a live game, and the she thinks the commercials are also games.

Jun 21
Sometimes I think white people are purposely stupid when dealing with a person with a Latin accent. A lady at the donut shop asked why the whole wheat bagel was more expensive than the others. “It’s 9 grams,” said the clerk. The lady kept repeating “9 grams?” like it wasn’t perfectly clear and making the clerk also repeat herself several times. Finally I turned to the lady and said sharply “It’s because it’s heavier!” That shut her up. I smiled at the clerk & said, “Perfectly understandable to me.” The clerk laughed, gave me my receipt and said, “Thank you for everything.”

I think people do this because it’s a power trip, an attempt to assert (pseudo) authority over someone because of language differences.

Jun 22
Here’s one of our new Patty O’ Chairs. Please note: it is not cloth. It has lovely cushions which I was too lazy to bring outside.

pic.twitter.com/H4hlA1mhkS

And here’s the new bench that goes with the chairs.

http://tinyurl.com/o39ehcr

Sturdy is GOOD. The literature said it will weather to a “nice grey.” And yes, it’s very comfortable and easy to get up from. Mom had no trouble. Nor did I. They are Strathwood Gibranta if you want to look for them elsewhere.

Jun 24
Here’s a thing I don’t get: “My team just won a big game! I’m going to go out and destroy things to celebrate!”

Jun 25
The Rasta Bus I passed three miles earlier passed me as I waited for a light on Main Street. There’s a metaphor there somewhere.

Jun 25
Life is a lot like Faery: once you enter it, you can’t go back. You must go through it.

Which is the premise of one of my novels. God and the fairies know if it will ever be written.

Jun 26
I think I’ve got outrage fatigue.

Jul 15
One of the downsides of having someone in to stay with my mom while I’m at work: snooping.

Jul 16
Min disappeared for hours and we thought she’d gotten out. I combed the neighborhood for her. Finally we heard her scratching from the underside of my mother’s giant recliner. She’d gotten trapped when Mom put the footrest down. All three of us were traumatized.

Jul 16
An epiphany this morning listening to NPR about living with teenagers: caregiving is like living with a toddler and a teenager at the same time.

Jul 17
Trust is a fragile thing, and when you have an unreliable 93-year-old narrator, it’s sometimes mighty difficult to know the truth.

Jul 23
Isn’t the idea of in home care to take the burden off rather than add more stress? Did I miss a memo? We recently received a grant from the VA allowing us 12 hours of help a week but it has problems of its own.

Things could be much, much worse. June was hellish. This month things are looking up. But there are always complications.

One of the nice/complicated things: a very nice, mature, solid replacement to a snooping, manipulative, thievish sort, but with scheduling conflicts. I’m going to ride it out and let next month take care of itself because I’m exhausted and can’t take more time off and because it’s not a perfect world.

Jul 23
Proof that there is a God: http://tinyurl.com/pp7dd9e 

Jul 25
So Mom fell in her bedroom today when she was alone. Not hurt, thank G–, but the neighbor who came over to help took the opportunity to lecture me about having someone stay with her full time. “We don’t have the money. What do you suggest we do?” “Oh, well, it looks like you’ve got a situation,” she said. Indeed, we do have a situation. Mom and I will have a talk tonight about using her medical alert button next time she falls rather than calling the neighbor. I work a half hour away so it’s difficult to get home to her in a timely fashion.

People are real free with the lecturing and advice, whether they have experience with caregiving or not.

Jul 25
I used to think I was a good judge of character but recent events have shown me that may be an illusion.

Jul 27
Thunder, lightning, and downpour. What are these things?

Rain pouring down, all the windows wide open, and fans going at full blast. We are not use to humidity. It sucks.

Poor Minnie is hiding under the bed. Every thunder strike is followed by sirens. We Californians really don’t know how to drive in the rain.

Turns out the sirens were due to a lightning blast a couple of miles away at Venice Pier. One killed, several injured. In fact, today 9 people were struck by lightning on Venice Beach CA, and a man and a girl hit by a plane forced to land on Venice Beach FL.

Jul 28
I suppose it’s too late to cry, “Foul!” on spoilers for The Big Lebowski, a movie I’ve always meant to see.

Jul 28
Discuss: “All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.” ― Tom Robbins

“All” is a bit broad. Some depression has roots in brain chemical imbalances and that cannot be said to be a character flaw. There’s a constellation of causes for depression. Self-pity and taking oneself too seriously may be two.

Perhaps Mr. Robbins is a dick.

Jul 30
My latest Etsy obsession: http://tinyurl.com/n3d9l5w 

Jul 31
The whole “Unfriend a Man” thing? http://tinyurl.com/jvos6l9  I can’t think of anything more boring than being surrounded only by women. Besides, when has reverse bigotry ever solved anything? When has blaming an entire half of the species because of the actions of a few led to anything other than Elliot Rodger? If you want to live in an estrogen-only environment, more power to you. As for me, I prefer a more varied hormonal environment, with give and take and the possibility of dialogue. Keeps life interesting.

Aug 2
Mom’s confusion tonight is too vast for 140 characters but too exhausting for anything larger.

All the perky caregiver advice experts make my ass burn.

Aug 4
A lifetime ago I read Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel” and adored it. Gave me the warm fuzzies. I read it yesterday for the first time since. I barely remembered it and when I was done I thought, “Why did this loom so large in my young imagination?” I mean, I liked the story, but it wasn’t the epic turning point it had been back then. And I remembered it as much more romantic, less downbeat. Could it be that I myself was more romantic and less downbeat? One must draw the conclusion that it is possibly so. Maybe the reason it loomed so large was because for the first time I saw one could be a fabulist and still considered literary, an important distinction for me back then.

Aug 4
I just learned that my cousin, the one who was going to stay with Mom while I had surgery, passed away in her sleep last night. Shock and sorrow.

She was diabetic and had COPD, and about five or so years ago, successfully fought off breast cancer. But when she realized her health had deteriorated to the point where she’d have to go to an assisted living situation, she decided she wouldn’t take her meds anymore. Her independence was everything to her. She wanted that last bit of control, I guess.

She wanted peace. She was done. She wanted to go be with her husband, the love of her life, who passed when he was only 35. She didn’t have an easy life. I hope she found that peace she was after.

Aug 5

To make the week even more perfect I am currently sitting in the jury room at the L.A. Metropolitan Courthouse.

Aug 5
I’ve gotten to the age where when I think back to how long it’s been since I did X activity the answer is often a bit frightening.

I’m also so old I have no shame. I am wearing my steampunk bifocals (reading glasses over my distance glasses) in the jury room. I’d take a pic but, alas, no pictures allowed in the jury room.

However, in a couple of weeks I will have grown up glasses at last and my army of reading glasses will go into the recycler.

Aug 7
Much easier feeling compassion for someone’s life once they’re dead, much harder when confronted with the irritations of day to day living. I guess we always assume they’ll always be around to irritate us, no matter what our head tells us about the impermanence of life.

Aug 8
I am not a responsible adult. Whoever put me in charge of this household made a HUGE mistake.

Aug 8
A death in the family, jury duty, and two days of stomach virus. I am D-O-N-E with this week.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

This wouldn't embed for some reason.


Video Of White Supremacist Learning He Is 14 Percent Black May Be The Best Thing Ever http://huff.to/1dZnBXV via @BlackVoices

This is a wonderful piece of writing—which I didn't write. And since it's about white male Baptists, I'm technically not breaking my pledge to not post about . . . this . . . anymore.


Aug 18, 2010

Please forgive me for the actions of extremists I have never met who commit acts of violence that I have never advocated

As a white male Baptist, it is my duty today to denounce the violence perpetrated by Patrick Gray Sharp, 29, who yesterday attacked the police headquarters in McKinney, Texas, in a heavily armed but ineffectual assault involving a high-powered rifle, road flares, "gasoline and ammonium nitrate fertilizer."

I understand that this denunciation must be swift and unambiguous and that, in the absence of such denunciations made by and on behalf of every and all white male Baptists, others are entitled to assume that every white male Baptist is fully in agreement with the actions of Patrick Gray Sharp and to therefore deny white male Baptists the rights others enjoy.

So I denounce this attack and state unequivocally that we white male Baptists do not believe in this kind of violent extremism. I beg you all not to condemn all of us for the actions of this lone member of our community, although of course I will understand if you decide that you must do so and will humbly accept whatever restrictions on our full participation in society that you see fit to impose. That's only fair.

I further beg your forgiveness for my not denouncing this violent act sooner. Unlike the nearly identical failed attack in Times Square, this attack wasn't the lead story on our local news and the newspaper I work for somehow didn't mention it at all. Then today I was outside most of the afternoon cutting the grass and just didn't hear about the story until now. I plead with you to understand that as soon as I learned of this incident, I rushed to post this denunciation.

Read the rest here.

1. It's a good excuse to read up on some really weird and unsavory topics.

2. It's completely portable. You can take your imagination anywhere you go.

3. You can pretend to be a serial killer without actually having to kill someone.

4. It allows you to keep imaginary friends well into adulthood.

5. When presented with an insoluble mystery, you can solve it. It may not be what really happened, but it could be . . . given the correct alignment of improbable events.

1. Since posting the Colin Firth quote with the Colin Firth wet shirt picture, I've had more women than using doing double takes outside my cubicle to "look" at the quote. (I don't know how much reading is actually going on.)

2. My latest non-alcoholic cocktail: one-half POM pomegranate-cherry, one-half orange juice. DE-licious! The OJ sweetens the POM without making it gacky sweet. And so good for you. Yes, yes, I know, the current thinking is "Don't drink your calories." Fruit juice is high in calories, but I love it so. Sometimes you just have to do what you love and eschew the calories.

3. Today's horoscope from The Onion: "Your creativity will be at an all-time high today. Take advantage of this by purchasing a second, larger bag of Popsicle sticks."

Hmm. Maybe I should take a break from the Popsicle stick diorama and tackle chapter 11 while I'm at it.

4. I've put myself on a strict, cash-only credit card diet. The only time I'm allowed off this diet is for car service, medical costs, vet costs, medicines. I did this once before and managed to stick with it for about three and a half years. I brought my indebtedness down by a bucketful. I've been on the current regime about a half week. I just got a medical bill for $341 for blood tests for my thyroid (my portion after insurance), with a promise of another $400 on the way, plus Science knows how much more for a little test I had last week. And I'm in relatively good health! And glad, all in all, that I have medical insurance. Guess I'll be eating plastic.

But our health care costs in this country are not out of line—no, no, no. Silly plebeian! And the millions of uninsured don't need relief from he crushing burden of trying to stay healthy. Ask the insurance industry—they'll tell you that competition for their rapaciousness is a bad thing that will only hurt the American people. /irony

5. I probably won't stop buying books, though. Maybe not as many online, but I cannot give up this Jones. Don't really want to, anyway. There is no cure, no insurance.

I think indoor plumbing is amongst the greatest inventions of mankind. Except, of course, when it's not. Then it is, perhaps, amongst the worst.

I seem to have a peculiar karma when it comes to plumbing. My legendary apartment of yore was infamous on this blog for its plumbing "issues," and much merriment was known in the land from my tales of vomiting sinks and hydroplaning trips across my kitchen floor. The sound of gurgling from the direction of a kitchen or a bathroom still works on my neural pathways to send me into a panic. And the bad plumbing spirits seem to have followed me to my current abode of the last three and a half years. Slowly but surely we are replacing every length of pipe underneath the house: $3000 here, $6000 there, and pretty soon you're talking real money, to paraphrase Sam Goldwyn. Our plumbers probably get golden dreams every time we call them.

I heard the horrifying sound of gurgling coming from my bathroom Tuesday night and ran in to discover the toilet acting as if it had a resident evil water spirit (or maybe I've just been reading too much lately about evil water spirits). Then the evil enchantment vanished as if it had never been. Everything seemed to be moving along nicely. We relaxed—until my shower the next morning. Soon the toilet, the shower, plus the toilet and shower in the roommate's bathroom all started channeling the spirit of Linda Blair from The Exorcist. I fled to work while the roommate called the plumber. He roto-rooted and everything was sunshine and happiness in the land once more. Until I came home from work and did a load of laundry. It was even worse than before, but as it was the middle of the night, and whereas everything eventually drained, we decided to wait for morning to get the plumber back. He roto-rooted again, using a bigger roto. Apparently, you have to be careful of size because if the damned things get stuck, there's no way of retracting them short of digging a big trench, opening the pipes, and charging the sorry home owner a really exorbitant fee. Who knew?

The upshot of all this? The current rooting around is only a temporary fix. The fault, dear Brutus, is in the connecting sewer pipe that joins our property to the city mains and the roots of the city trees that have done such wonderful work mucking things up. Because the problem is on our side of the sidewalk, however, the city kindly insists that we have to pay for it. Fixing it is going to involve digging a really big trench and charging us a really big fee. We have maybe a couple of months to make up our minds, but they won't guarantee the fix any longer than that.

Oh, and somewhere in the middle of all this I came down with the 24 stomach flu that the roommate had last weekend. Stomach flu and plumbing problems—not a felicitous combination. And to put the perfect cap on a perfect situation: yesterday when I typed the email saying I wouldn't be into work, I typed the wrong alias. The alias on my work machine for sending mail to my colleagues was the same as my yahoo alias for the message board for the Online Writing Workshop. So now hundreds and hundreds of people knew I had trouble with my plumbing and trouble with my plumbing.

Fortunately, I didn't get too graphic (it was to my colleages, after all), but it was very embarrassing. I don't know why that email is embarrassing while talking about it here is not, but there you have it. Today, everything seems much more hilarious than it did yesterday. Life does require one to have a keen sense of irony sometimes in order to survive.

• On the side of the Dreyer's Slow-Churned ice cream carton it says (paraphrase), "Scientific studies have shown that consuming moderate amounts of dairy products daily leads to a healthy lifestyle." It was Dreyer's Lite, but somehow I don't think that's what the studies meant.

• I'm having so much trouble buying a necklace for my mother online. The post office stole the first one. This isn't the first time a package has gone missing, always when a particular mail carrier is on duty, so I feel comfortable with the word "stole." Then yesterday I got an email regarding another necklace I ordered through an Amazon vendor. At the time they guaranteed delivery by December 24, but it now has a revised delivery date of December 29. Too late to cancel—it's already mailed—they just used the slow boat to China method. I guess I'll be wrapping up a picture of the necklace and giving it to Mom for Christmas. I'm thinking of taping it to a rock or something so the package at least has some heft . . . but that seems like a rather dirty trick. Even though the gift is on the way—really, Mom! Unless the post office steals this one, too.

• I've been doing an inordinate amount of comfort reading this year. I just finished rereading Naked in Death because J. D. Robb is sort of my ultimate comfort read—which is ironic, since those books are all about serial killers and violent murder. But I just love hanging out with the regular characters in her books. I hadn't read Naked in years, since it's the first in the series, but I found I had a hankering to revisit it. I couldn't find my old copy—I suspect it's still packed away in the garage—so I bought a new paperback.

And wow, La Nora must have rewritten it at some point. Although when I first read it I found myself captivated by the characters of Eve and Roarke and their friends and acquaintances, I always thought the writing in that first book wasn't up to the rest of the series. There was a great deal of head-hopping, as I recall. I remembered one short scene which must have jumped into four or five different heads, including people who were completely incidental to the story. But that's gone. There's still a bit of head-hopping, but way less, and the prose has been smoothed out and beefed up. It's the same story, for the most part, but one crucial scene in which Roarke finds out Eve's big secret is gone. Nora/Robb replaced it with something subtler, something that allows Eve some choice in the revelation and Roarke some time to figure things out beforehand. It's a good change, but I'd been anticipating the emotional wallop of that other scene. I have to say, I missed it, and it lessens the impact of the book's final exchange between Roarke and Eve, which refers back to the stark emotion of the original scene. But I guess the change serves the characters better, in the sense of making them less passive victims of circumstance.

So there's a writing lesson there, I suppose: in every revision, something is lost and something gained, and it's all a matter of what you're willing to give up. Your readers may not agree with your decision, however, and after publication, I'd say the book belongs to them at least as much as it does to the writer. Or am I completely off base there? I know writers often wish they could change the books that have already gone public. Few have the clout of Nora Roberts which allows it, though.

I still enjoyed hanging out with those characters, getting to see them at the beginning of their arc, and still derived my necessary comfort, so I'm good. I don't know if I'll reread the entire series. But I might.

Yep, it's a sign of the Apocalypse, or at the very least the end of Western Civilization. Certainly it's worth nonstop press converage for two days straight: Britney Spears has shaved her head.


Random quote of the day:

"...when I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils, (what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put into the new Mythology I don't know,) it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it."

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden


Which proves, I guess, that even nature guys can be impressed by big choo-choo trains.

Unless he was being ironic.

I wouldn't know anything about irony.