That would be me about me...Readers with good memory recall will remember that I reported back in mid-October that I didn't have a herniated disc.
After some delicate probing of the neuro, I discovered that officially I have: viral ridiculitis of the iliac femoral nerve. Aren't you glad to know that and didn't you instantly "get it"? I certainly didn't!
"Ridic" (for short) is continuing to improve, due largely to the anti-virus drug I was prescribed.
I knew -- vaguely -- that antiviral drugs existed so taking 5 a day was a new experience. Now I am nearly at the end of them and am firmly convinced that the minute I swallow the last one I will be all back to normal (referring to physical state, not mental.)
Meanwhile, a minor setback this morning. I arose from my side of the bed, fully energized, ready to take on the world! So much so that I completely forgot that I'm not normal and started stepping up the stairs as any one would. 2nd step - WHOMP. Happily I managed to spin and sit - on the bent up back leg. Happily it hurt nothing but my amour propre (loosely translated as self respect.)
On the positive side, I haven't developed recliner bedsores (decubitis) yet. And I can one-step up and down the stairs easily. I can also pull "bad leg" in after me to get in the car without using hands. I'll be well before I know it!
After all, said piously, I am the only one who can control my moods and I have decided to take a positive stance (which I can do with the knee locked.)
Monday, November 16, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
"Other Voices, Other Rooms"
(A Truman Capote title.)
Writers, like singers, are said to have a "voice" (many also have vices, but I digress) but in a different way. A "writer's voice" is his/her writing style. Elmer Leonard - terse, few descriptions, mostly dialogue for example.
Last week at Thurs. Writers, Dale gave me a book he had finished and enjoyed titled "The Circle." He said it was a bout a writing group in Chichester, England, and I immediately thought, "Uh, oh - a British cozy" (meaning largely folksy.) I didn't have high hopes at all. The book was cheaply printed (or so it seemed to me) and the "circle" books have been done nearly to death -- sewing, quilting, knitting ... yes, all familiar.
To my pleased surprise though, it was a skillfully told story about a widowed man with a 14 year old daughter who writes jingles or doggerel because it amuses him. The group sounded congenial in its newspaper ad so somewhat reluctantly, he decides to take in a meeting. "It can only be amusing," he thinks, "just the one night."
As it happens, things are not quite as they seem within the group. In fact, one of them is a murderous arsonist! Not the man who writes fantasy nor the female erotic poet ... not the old dear with an outdated book of "Household Hints for the 20th Century" nor the man with the how-to-garden book.
Each of the members is spotlighted and quickly temperaments, styles and voices come through to the reader. The hero, Bob, is clearly human as are all of the other characters -- it's a skillful writing job and upon looking at the back flap, I see that author Peter Lovesey has won the British Crime Writers Association Silver and Gold Daggers plus the Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement. In the Us, he has received Edgar and Ellery Queen Readers Awards.
From a room in Chichester to one in Redondo Beach ... with a variety of voices.
"The Circle" by Peter Lovesey Little, Brown & Company 358 pages $24
Writers, like singers, are said to have a "voice" (many also have vices, but I digress) but in a different way. A "writer's voice" is his/her writing style. Elmer Leonard - terse, few descriptions, mostly dialogue for example.
Last week at Thurs. Writers, Dale gave me a book he had finished and enjoyed titled "The Circle." He said it was a bout a writing group in Chichester, England, and I immediately thought, "Uh, oh - a British cozy" (meaning largely folksy.) I didn't have high hopes at all. The book was cheaply printed (or so it seemed to me) and the "circle" books have been done nearly to death -- sewing, quilting, knitting ... yes, all familiar.
To my pleased surprise though, it was a skillfully told story about a widowed man with a 14 year old daughter who writes jingles or doggerel because it amuses him. The group sounded congenial in its newspaper ad so somewhat reluctantly, he decides to take in a meeting. "It can only be amusing," he thinks, "just the one night."
As it happens, things are not quite as they seem within the group. In fact, one of them is a murderous arsonist! Not the man who writes fantasy nor the female erotic poet ... not the old dear with an outdated book of "Household Hints for the 20th Century" nor the man with the how-to-garden book.
Each of the members is spotlighted and quickly temperaments, styles and voices come through to the reader. The hero, Bob, is clearly human as are all of the other characters -- it's a skillful writing job and upon looking at the back flap, I see that author Peter Lovesey has won the British Crime Writers Association Silver and Gold Daggers plus the Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement. In the Us, he has received Edgar and Ellery Queen Readers Awards.
From a room in Chichester to one in Redondo Beach ... with a variety of voices.
"The Circle" by Peter Lovesey Little, Brown & Company 358 pages $24
Friday, November 13, 2009
Richie and the Writers
I know he is curious about what we do and talk about every Thursday afternoon. He is always full of suggestions about what we could do. Some ideas have been - charter a bus and go to a Dodger game! Head for the Anza Inn after each meeting and have a shot and a beer! Meet outside in Veteran's Park in nice weather! He will say, "Don't forget to tell them about the Palos Verdes library book sale!" I have yet to leave for a meeting without some suggestion ringing in my ears.
Richie is not allowed to attend our meetings (except for a social half-hour before we start critique and to the annual Christmas pot luck luncheon - to which all Significant Others are invited.)
As a warm-up to our own Thanksgiving meal, he baked a "test" pumpkin pie, probably to see if he's lost his touch in the year since he last made one. As usual, it was perfect. He announced that he would be bringing it to the Thurs. Writers (more formally known as the South Bay Writers Workshop.)
There were six of us present. I brought paper plates and plastic forks and cut the pie into eight equal slices. Everyone had a slice (in fact, Donna had two) while he moved the car. He got the last piece and to visit and then it was 1 p.m. and he was summarily banished (by me; they were perfectly content to let him stay, but I knew that he could never keep his mouth shut and while Richie has many, more stellar qualities than most, he is emphatically not a literary critic.)
But he does make a damned fine pumpkin pie.
RICHIE'S PUMPKIN PIE
Crust: store-bought graham cracker, baked to manufacturer's specifications.
Filling:
1 1/4 cups plus 2 T milk
2 T butter
2 eggs
1 15-oz. can pumpkin (Libby's, I believe)
1/2 cup sugar plus 2 1/2 T additional sugar.
Pinch of sea salt
1/2 teas. cinnamon
1/2 teas. ground ginger
1/2 teas. ground nutmeg
1 T milk for brushing the crust edges
Re-heat the oven to 450 (after baking the pie crust)
Heat the milk until just hot, not simmering
Remove from the heat, add butter
Lightly beat the eggs in a bowl and add the pumpkin, sugar, salt and spices.
Stir until well blended and then stir in the hot milk mixture.
Brush the pie crust edges with the milk.
Pour the filling into the crust and bake at 450 for 15 minutes, reduce the heat to 350 and bake an additional 35 minutes.
Each serving: 326 calories, 6 grams protein, 43 grams carbohydrates, 2 grams fiber, 15 grams fat, 9 grams saturated fat, 113 mg cholesterol; 222mg sodium.
Richie is not allowed to attend our meetings (except for a social half-hour before we start critique and to the annual Christmas pot luck luncheon - to which all Significant Others are invited.)
As a warm-up to our own Thanksgiving meal, he baked a "test" pumpkin pie, probably to see if he's lost his touch in the year since he last made one. As usual, it was perfect. He announced that he would be bringing it to the Thurs. Writers (more formally known as the South Bay Writers Workshop.)
There were six of us present. I brought paper plates and plastic forks and cut the pie into eight equal slices. Everyone had a slice (in fact, Donna had two) while he moved the car. He got the last piece and to visit and then it was 1 p.m. and he was summarily banished (by me; they were perfectly content to let him stay, but I knew that he could never keep his mouth shut and while Richie has many, more stellar qualities than most, he is emphatically not a literary critic.)
But he does make a damned fine pumpkin pie.
RICHIE'S PUMPKIN PIE
Crust: store-bought graham cracker, baked to manufacturer's specifications.
Filling:
1 1/4 cups plus 2 T milk
2 T butter
2 eggs
1 15-oz. can pumpkin (Libby's, I believe)
1/2 cup sugar plus 2 1/2 T additional sugar.
Pinch of sea salt
1/2 teas. cinnamon
1/2 teas. ground ginger
1/2 teas. ground nutmeg
1 T milk for brushing the crust edges
Re-heat the oven to 450 (after baking the pie crust)
Heat the milk until just hot, not simmering
Remove from the heat, add butter
Lightly beat the eggs in a bowl and add the pumpkin, sugar, salt and spices.
Stir until well blended and then stir in the hot milk mixture.
Brush the pie crust edges with the milk.
Pour the filling into the crust and bake at 450 for 15 minutes, reduce the heat to 350 and bake an additional 35 minutes.
Each serving: 326 calories, 6 grams protein, 43 grams carbohydrates, 2 grams fiber, 15 grams fat, 9 grams saturated fat, 113 mg cholesterol; 222mg sodium.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
A Very Good Read
Since I have become a recliner dweller, I've had a lot of time to read. Happily, it's one of my very favorite occupations.
"First Ladies - An Intimate Group Portrait of White House Wives" by Margaret Truman Fawcett Books 335 pages $14.95 (paperback.)
Few could be more qualified to write about these woman. She is the only child of Bess and Harry Truman and, starting with Eleanor Roosevelt, has known every living First Lady since then.
Rather than a dreary chronicle - year by year - of what they were like, she has sorted them out into classifications. To name a few of the 25 chapters --
"Pioneer Crusaders" - Lucy ("Lemonade Lucy) Hayes, the first presidental wife to have a college degree and the first to ban serving alcoholic beverages in the White House. (Entrepreneurs would pay staff for a "real" drink behind her back.)
"The Lost Companion" - Eleanor Roosevelt. FDR cheated on her; she found the love letters from Another Woman and flatly refused ever to have anything to do with him at all. Let's say it was no accident that she spent most of the White House years on the road.
"The First Lady Who Wanted the Job" - Helen Taft who was far more ambitious than her husband by far.
"The First Lady Nobody Knew" - Pat Nixon aka "Plastic Pat" or "The Robot."
"Maternally Yours" - Edith Roosevelt who brought all six children (including teenaged Alice, daughter of his late first wife) to the White House where they terrorized the help and were not above scaring visitors.
Barbara Bush arrived with five adult children and 10 grandchildren.
"The Glamour Girls" - President Tyler's second wife Julia Gardener Tyler, Dolley Madison, Frances Folsom Cleveland.
Make no bones about it, I am shallow enough to enjoy the human side of politics and history and this book satisfied quite well.
"First Ladies - An Intimate Group Portrait of White House Wives" by Margaret Truman Fawcett Books 335 pages $14.95 (paperback.)
Few could be more qualified to write about these woman. She is the only child of Bess and Harry Truman and, starting with Eleanor Roosevelt, has known every living First Lady since then.
Rather than a dreary chronicle - year by year - of what they were like, she has sorted them out into classifications. To name a few of the 25 chapters --
"Pioneer Crusaders" - Lucy ("Lemonade Lucy) Hayes, the first presidental wife to have a college degree and the first to ban serving alcoholic beverages in the White House. (Entrepreneurs would pay staff for a "real" drink behind her back.)
"The Lost Companion" - Eleanor Roosevelt. FDR cheated on her; she found the love letters from Another Woman and flatly refused ever to have anything to do with him at all. Let's say it was no accident that she spent most of the White House years on the road.
"The First Lady Who Wanted the Job" - Helen Taft who was far more ambitious than her husband by far.
"The First Lady Nobody Knew" - Pat Nixon aka "Plastic Pat" or "The Robot."
"Maternally Yours" - Edith Roosevelt who brought all six children (including teenaged Alice, daughter of his late first wife) to the White House where they terrorized the help and were not above scaring visitors.
Barbara Bush arrived with five adult children and 10 grandchildren.
"The Glamour Girls" - President Tyler's second wife Julia Gardener Tyler, Dolley Madison, Frances Folsom Cleveland.
Make no bones about it, I am shallow enough to enjoy the human side of politics and history and this book satisfied quite well.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Continuity...
Their October meeting was the last for Richie's retiree club and the annual Christmas lunch will be the last - ever. Or, so it stands now...
At today's case conferencing (Beach Cities Health District's Friend 2 Friend program) one of the volunteers said that her client had invited her to a retirement club's annual Christmas lunch. She'd seen the tickets ($20/person) and wondered if it would be proper to accept? (BCHD corporate policy is: volunteers cannot receive anything worth more than $20 from a client.)
The client had said it would be her treat. At the meeting we offered a solution. If it's a Toys for Tots program (it usually is) she could tell the client - "Okay, you get lunch and I'll get the toys."
I remember last year's lunch when my fellow volunteer, Jerry Kelly, escorted her client, Rosanna, to it. It was an unexpected treat and I can still the two of them - tall, slim, erect posture at it. Jerry died of lung cancer in May, 2009.
The retirement club is going, Jerry has gone and yet, her client (age 86) is still alert, alive and interested. Bless her and Beach Cities Health District - still thriving and providing some 700 "friends" with people to visit them.
At today's case conferencing (Beach Cities Health District's Friend 2 Friend program) one of the volunteers said that her client had invited her to a retirement club's annual Christmas lunch. She'd seen the tickets ($20/person) and wondered if it would be proper to accept? (BCHD corporate policy is: volunteers cannot receive anything worth more than $20 from a client.)
The client had said it would be her treat. At the meeting we offered a solution. If it's a Toys for Tots program (it usually is) she could tell the client - "Okay, you get lunch and I'll get the toys."
I remember last year's lunch when my fellow volunteer, Jerry Kelly, escorted her client, Rosanna, to it. It was an unexpected treat and I can still the two of them - tall, slim, erect posture at it. Jerry died of lung cancer in May, 2009.
The retirement club is going, Jerry has gone and yet, her client (age 86) is still alert, alive and interested. Bless her and Beach Cities Health District - still thriving and providing some 700 "friends" with people to visit them.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Happy Valentine's Day!
No, I haven't been hitting the sauce; am well aware that it's 9:27 a.m. on Monday, November 9th.
But this Valentine's I'm getting a special gift, one I've waited seven long years to receive.
PublishAmerica.com is returning the publishing rights to my second book on that glorious day!
But this Valentine's I'm getting a special gift, one I've waited seven long years to receive.
PublishAmerica.com is returning the publishing rights to my second book on that glorious day!
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Why I Hate/Fear Guns
(Not that anyone asked.)
I don't doubt that there are a lot of people who could say, "Well, I was brought up with guns and I think..." (opinion expressed.) Like them, I was, too.
My father grew up on a Midwest farm and most farms had some sort of firearm -- for seasonal bird shooting, having to put an animal down ..all practical purposes. My Dad enjoyed hunting and with his pals would take off for Wyoming or Colorado in deer season. My mother teased him that they drank more whiskey on those jaunts than they did "hunting." Venison is terrible, but elk burgers weren't so bad. The deer skins were sent out to be tanned and mother made us jackets. Practical usage of my Dad's annual hunts.
By the time I was six, I enjoyed the gun cleaning ritual and can still smell the gun oil, much like Proust's Madeleines. His sister and her husband lived on a farm outside of Yates Center, KS, down in southeast Kansas. We visited often. I was a curious, restless child and loved to exploring in the fields. Daddy gave me a beat-up old .22 to carry on these expeditons after he taught me to carefully slide the gun under a fence (barrel away from me,) walk a few paces away, hold the barbed wire apart and get through the fence. My mother was originally horrified, but Dad convinced her he'd drilled me in gun safety. It's entirely possible that the gun wasn't even loaded, but I enjoyed the "big girl" thrill of being ready for anything! Bring it on!
These events occurred when I was around 8 and both involved Aunt Vera and Uncle Floyd's farm. Grandma (Dad's mother) lived "in town" (pop. 1,200 maybe.) The farm was some 12 to 15 miles outside in the country and was the last one on that county road. Appropriately, Vera named it "Land's End.)
Cut to: Daddy's driving me back from town (Saturday errands/) when he spots a hawk above a field. He slams on the brakes, grabs his new .257 (247?) Roberts with scope sight, flings open the car door, takes aim and fires. Down drops the hawk and we go off to collect it. The hawk had been carrying a chicken and both were now barely distinguishable as having once been birds. Daddy was quite pleased that one shot had brought them down.
The other traumatic experience. There was a pond across the road and Daddy took me cottonmouth hunting. He was carrying a .38 Smith & Wesson. We crossed a field and were standing on the pond bank when he saw a snake's head swimming towards us -- quickly he shot at it --and in the same moment we saw another one heading for us from the underbrush. He shot it, too. After making sure they were both dead, he cut a stout stick and impaled the bigger snake on it and we headed back to the farm.
Once there, he got mother to take a picture of me, holding the dead snake out on the stick. I was terrifed (I believed that a snake wasn't dead until its head had been cut off.) Daddy gloated because the snake had been pregnant and was carrying six egg sacs.
The point of these two stories? I have seen, up close and personal, exactly the damage a gun can do and I never want any part of that.
I'll take on the NRA on another day ...
I don't doubt that there are a lot of people who could say, "Well, I was brought up with guns and I think..." (opinion expressed.) Like them, I was, too.
My father grew up on a Midwest farm and most farms had some sort of firearm -- for seasonal bird shooting, having to put an animal down ..all practical purposes. My Dad enjoyed hunting and with his pals would take off for Wyoming or Colorado in deer season. My mother teased him that they drank more whiskey on those jaunts than they did "hunting." Venison is terrible, but elk burgers weren't so bad. The deer skins were sent out to be tanned and mother made us jackets. Practical usage of my Dad's annual hunts.
By the time I was six, I enjoyed the gun cleaning ritual and can still smell the gun oil, much like Proust's Madeleines. His sister and her husband lived on a farm outside of Yates Center, KS, down in southeast Kansas. We visited often. I was a curious, restless child and loved to exploring in the fields. Daddy gave me a beat-up old .22 to carry on these expeditons after he taught me to carefully slide the gun under a fence (barrel away from me,) walk a few paces away, hold the barbed wire apart and get through the fence. My mother was originally horrified, but Dad convinced her he'd drilled me in gun safety. It's entirely possible that the gun wasn't even loaded, but I enjoyed the "big girl" thrill of being ready for anything! Bring it on!
These events occurred when I was around 8 and both involved Aunt Vera and Uncle Floyd's farm. Grandma (Dad's mother) lived "in town" (pop. 1,200 maybe.) The farm was some 12 to 15 miles outside in the country and was the last one on that county road. Appropriately, Vera named it "Land's End.)
Cut to: Daddy's driving me back from town (Saturday errands/) when he spots a hawk above a field. He slams on the brakes, grabs his new .257 (247?) Roberts with scope sight, flings open the car door, takes aim and fires. Down drops the hawk and we go off to collect it. The hawk had been carrying a chicken and both were now barely distinguishable as having once been birds. Daddy was quite pleased that one shot had brought them down.
The other traumatic experience. There was a pond across the road and Daddy took me cottonmouth hunting. He was carrying a .38 Smith & Wesson. We crossed a field and were standing on the pond bank when he saw a snake's head swimming towards us -- quickly he shot at it --and in the same moment we saw another one heading for us from the underbrush. He shot it, too. After making sure they were both dead, he cut a stout stick and impaled the bigger snake on it and we headed back to the farm.
Once there, he got mother to take a picture of me, holding the dead snake out on the stick. I was terrifed (I believed that a snake wasn't dead until its head had been cut off.) Daddy gloated because the snake had been pregnant and was carrying six egg sacs.
The point of these two stories? I have seen, up close and personal, exactly the damage a gun can do and I never want any part of that.
I'll take on the NRA on another day ...
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