What are you reading right now?

I have never been someone who could read multiple books at the same time. I need to read one book, then another, then another. I have a friend who always has two or three books going at the same time. How does she do this? I only have a limited amount of time in my day to read, if any, and I like to finish books quickly, for the sense of accomplishment, at the least. If I were reading three books at one time, I don’t think I’d ever finish any of them.

This same friend of mine says when she can’t think of anything to read, she goes for the thickest book she can find at the bookstore. I’m more your slim volume type. Then again, two of the last four books I’ve read this year have been more than 600 pages each. And the one I’m reading now has more than 750 pages. Even though I often enjoy a thick book, I frequently look at it as a chore, as something else to do.

You need to make time in your life to read. And reading a thick book takes time. I always hear mothers say they can’t remember the last time they had enough time to read a whole book, yet they always seem to be up on the bestsellers as well as anyone I know. How do these people find all this time to read? They must not be writing all day.

In the past two weeks I haven’t picked up a book, mostly because I was writing something substantial against a deadline. Now there is a teetering, tottering pile of books next to my bed that I’ve been meaning to read and I can’t make a commitment to any of them. They are, in no particular order:

• The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown
• Salem Falls, by Jodi Picoult
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion
• The latest Rand McNally Road Atlas
• Let The Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
• Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway, by Susan Jeffers
• Real Time Marketing & PR, by David Meerman Scott
• The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
• The latest issue of Poets & Writers magazine

So what did I finally choose when I was done with my big writing project? None of the above. I went for Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer (I know, I know). Someone got me reading the series, and now I feel like I have to finish it - I only have this one book left to go. Otherwise it will feel like reading a really really long book and stopping three quarters of the way through. I have been hassled for reading this series the whole way through, but you know what? It’s easy reading. It’s comfortable. I can take on a 750-page book like that because in the limited amount of time I give myself to read each day, I can still finish this book in a week.

I’ve always taken umbrage with people who pass judgment on what others read. I’m happy that the person next to me on the beach is reading at all, regardless of the book’s intellectual level. Reading improves your vocabulary, your spelling and your general knowledge of the world. And if you read what you think you should be reading instead of what you enjoy, reading will become a chore and you will eventually stop doing it.

So I’ll get through that whole wobbly pile of books next to my bed, in time. But right now, I’m rewarding myself for a writing job well done - reading a book I know I’ll get through fast and will probably enjoy - no matter what anybody else thinks of it. After all, no matter what book it is:

Reading is fundamental!

Finally sprung from the ER



Not a happy camper

 Mason is okay. Or will be. Close to 6 hours after my husband and I first left our home to go get him a quick check-up, we rolled back into our driveway with exactly the information we had deduced on our own before leaving. Mason has a broken rib. There is nothing he can do but wait for it to heal. Not a damn thing wrong with his head, which is what we told all these doctors that I mentioned in my previous post.

The doctors were all worried about head trauma and we spent hours waiting for tests and results based on what they thought they saw in Mason's eyes. What they probably saw were the googly eyes of a man who hadn't slept for more than 24 hours because of the pain in his ribs. At that point, they weren't letting us leave, and the fast track they started us on, had slowed to a crawl.

When we finally got the news that his head was okay, we were relieved, but also annoyed because we both knew he wasn't acting in any way like his marbles had come loose. Then Mason got dressed and we waited for the doctor to come back and release us. And waited. And waited. And waited a little longer. It was a good hour-and-a-half of sitting in the examination room waiting for the doctor to return with a prescription for pain pills so we could go home.

When we finally got the prescription and exit paperwork to check out of the hospital, we were more than ready to leave. Not much after we returned home, as I was walking the poor dog who had been locked up all day, I realized that, even with insurance, we had just paid more than $140 for a lousy 10 inexpensive, generic pain pills. After almost 6 hours of tension and stress and poking and prodding, the doctor provided enough pain pills to last 2-1/2 days for a broken bone that would take weeks to repair itself.

So we'll both just have to deal with his suffering as it comes - the American health care system at it finest.

Spendin' the day in the ER

So I'm sitting in the emergency room, waiting for my husband to get x-rays. Of course it's a beautiful, sunny day outside. When is it ever a crappy, rainy day when you have to spend it in the ER?

We had no intention of being here today, but my husband fell really hard last night, probably breaking a rib. He tried to tough it out because really, what can you do for a broken rib? Finally, the pain got to be too much. We tried to go to an urgent care facility today, just to get an x-ray and some pain meds, but now they're worried about what's going on in his head, so here we are.

My husband has been shipped off to CT/x-ray land somewhere and will probably not be back for a while. Having anticipated this scenario, I grabbed my netbook when we left the house to get some writing done. We've spent almost three hours in two medical facilities and we have yet to get a diagnosis. Looks like I'll have plenty of time to write.

Surprisingly, the ER has been pretty time-efficient. The urgent care facility was the time eater. I'm glad his need for care wasn't actually urgent when we went there. We were the only ones in the place besides the employees and it took for-EVER to see a doctor. Then, after five minutes in the examining room, the doctor decided they didn't have the capacity to treat him, so here we are. When the ER triage unit indicated head trauma, my husband got fast-tracked, but it turns out there are a lot of steps in the fast-track process. So I wait.

This just in - we have a broken rib. The doctor came looking for my husband, but he's not back yet. Where could he be? He left for an x-ray at least 45 minutes ago, and the results are already back! I found out that there is nothing they can do for him except to give him some pain meds. The urgent care place had an x-ray machine and the doctor had a prescription pad - what was it that they didn't have the capacity for? Well, we still have to find out if there is head trauma, so...

More later.

Spring Sprang Sprung Sproing!



Eggs can stand on one end during the Vernal Equinox.

 Howl at the magic moon? Done it. Standing eggs up on end? Done it. Leaving your convertible out in the snow, with the top down? Done it. Talking your car dealership into putting a new battery in your car for free? Done it. All in one weekend? Done it. It’s been an eventful few days for me.

I got an email on Friday, reminding me not to miss the full moon on Saturday night. It was the closest the moon had been to the earth since 1993, and all sorts of activities related to an increased gravitational pull were supposed to happen, like Los Angeles falling into the sea.

I saw the moon through a through a hazy forest, looking like something from a scary movie. It was gigantic and yellow and round, and seemed to be almost touching the ground. I howled at it, because I was raised to howl at full moons. I figured if there was ever a moon to howl at, this was the one. Then I went inside. Los Angeles never did fall into the sea, but at least I got to see the magic moon.

Sunday was the first day of spring, or the vernal equinox. And speaking of gravitational pull, it’s been said that at exactly the moment the vernal equinox takes place, you can stand a raw egg up on its end. I know this to be true because I’ve done it for many years. My mother looked it up and scientists say there is no basis in fact that this should be true. Yet, at 7:21pm on Sunday night in Upstate New York, I managed to line up three raw eggs, side by side, standing on their ends. My husband got it to work it in another part of the room, my mother did it in Pennsylvania, and a good friend got it to work in San Diego.

So scientists, shmientists, it works. I love stuff like that. And the eggs will stay standing, unless of course, as in my case, the cat comes along and thinks they are play balls and knocks them all over. Mom says to make an omelet out of the eggs the next day for good luck, though I’ve never been able to connect good luck with a vernal equinox egg omelet. The omelet is good though.

And the car. I put the top down on my convertible because it was such a beautiful day Saturday and I want to go for a ride in my sporty new ragtop. But then the car wouldn’t go. Since it was the weekend, the service dept at the dealership couldn’t help until Monday. My husband and I tried jumping it and that made it go dead entirely. So we did a damn good job of covering up the car with a tarp and bungee cords and went to bed.

Luckily it was a beautiful day on Sunday, too, so I didn’t worry too much about the car. I’d deal with it Monday. I woke up on Monday morning to a blizzard-like snowstorm and all I could think about was my poor little convertible, out there in the elements, with just a tarp to keep the snow out. After several calls and much angst, I got the dealer to come to the house with a magic box, which started the car in one try.

Now the car is working, the top is up and I was even able to turn the car off - and on again! Since I’d just purchased the car a month ago, the dealer offered to replace the battery for free! I thought I was going to have one of those “you drove it off the lot” arguments, but they were very accommodating.

So I don’t know if the earth’s unusual gravitational pull over the weekend had any effect on the trouble I had with my car, but let’s just hope the perfect storm of those three events doesn’t fall over three days in a row again.       



Monday morning



Monday afternoon

               

　

I lost a good friend today

My neighbors’ dog, Wrinkles, died today. I cried. And cried. And cried. One of those cries when you wonder if it will ever stop. This wasn’t even my dog! Oh, how I rue that day. But I saw Wrinkles and her two sisters all the time. They knew who I was when they saw me. I felt like we were at least related.

Wrinkles was just fine only two days ago. Yesterday, she came down with Shar Pei fever, and this morning we got the news.

She was 13, well past her 10-year life expectancy, but you would never know it to meet the vibrant, playful little Shar Pei mix. She would trot jauntily down the road, always checking to see if my chocolate lab was out. If so, they would race across long expanses of road and lawn to meet, acting like it hadn’t just been an hour ago that they’d last seen each other. It was adorable. Wrinkles’ owner likened it to a Kermit and Miss Piggy love scene.

The following came in an e-mail from her owner today:

…Wrinkles was a dog for everyone. She made so many people laugh just to see her. She really was a dog for the ages. I can hardly believe she’s gone—the day before yesterday she was playing her stick game…A crazy game that only she would have made up…

Wrinkles was so loveable that her owners had her trained as a therapy dog and she would visit Hospice patients to brighten their day. Her visits meant so much to these people that one time she was even mentioned in a patient’s obituary.

I am now progressing through the various stages of grief and have managed to stop crying, but how I will miss that silly little dog.

Beware, the Ides of March.
　

Remember the library?

I went to the library this week, and felt like I was visiting an old friend. I haven’t been to the library in some time, as I have more than enough books at home waiting to be read. This time, I was doing research for a chapter I’m writing for a book. In addition to the internet research I was able to print out from home, at the library I found three books, a DVD and a CD on my topic, vastly enriching my research, and the depth of my content. Now I have so much material, I don’t know what to write.

When I got to the library and settled down to work, I felt immediately comfortable. The smell of the books took me back to the children’s room at the library in the town where I grew up. My mother would deposit me there with my sister and a book or two, and go off into the bowels of the adult section to slink among the shelves. It felt safe to be in that room, just for kids, back when it was safe to leave your kids in a place like that. I could exercise my independence there. I could pick my own books off the shelves. Books that interested me. Books with pictures.

I remember getting my very first library card. I was five years old and in order to get the card I had to be able to write my own first name. I can still see that orange paper card, scrawled with my gigantic letters. I did it, and the card was mine. All mine. I could check out my own books with my own card. I remember the satisfaction I felt in having my very own library card. After all, with my mother being a bookish type, we spent a lot of time there; I had plenty of opportunities to check out books.

Fast forward to college. I loved my college library. Big as it was, I was totally comfortable there, like it was my own cocoon. I spent time there reading, studying, sleeping. Friends were everywhere. Once again I was in a place where I felt safe.

Going to the library this week was soothing. I realized that it was an escape from all the stimuli that bombards me, and everyone, everywhere. There is no music, no television, no computer screens (unless you want them), no telephones, no crinkling food packages being laboriously opened, no smells from the food that would be inside those packages and only calm, muted voices. Even the scanner used to check out books is silent.

It’s nice to know that when I need to get away from the world, my local library will always be a safe harbor. And never much farther than just around the corner.

Ambien, You Have Forsaken Me!

It's 4am as I write this. It's the best sleep I've had in days. Four-and-a-half uninterrupted hours of sleep. Uninterrupted is the key word. I bounced out of bed at 3:44 this morning, unable to sleep one more wink, having slept straight through my brief repose. If I slept nine or ten hours, but woke up several times in the night, I'd be exhausted and cranky, praying for the end of the day when I could go back to bed.

My best friend, Ambien, has let me down. Say what you will about it, but if I take one I'm out in 15 minutes and a marching band could go through our bedroom without my batting an eye. I don't know what's happened lately - maybe too many Girl Scout cookies too close to bedtime - but Ambien has not been there in the clutch. I tried chewing one last night, to speed up it's effect. Never try that. They taste terrible. Really terrible. And it doesn't help. I did fall asleep, eventually, but not with the clockwork precision I've come to count on from Ambien.

Over the past few nights, I've dozed for an hour or so, then woke up, then couldn't get back to sleep for hours. By 7pm the next day, I was a bear, eating dinner in a flash, then bolting upstairs to jump into bed, where I'd immediately kick into overdrive and stay awake, staring at the ceiling until 2am, praying for sleep. I'd read, I'd write, incoherently, I'd watch TV, I'd change beds. Eventually I'd fall asleep, just at the moment I was sure I'd heard a burglar trying to break into the house. I can scare myself to sleep, apparently.

I'm working on a three-day deficit of sleep here, yet feel awake and refreshed, enough so to be able to sit down and blog. I don't feel bad if I wake my husband up, because 1) he can sleep sitting up, literally, any time, anywhere, and 2) his snoring is often what keeps me awake. I tried in vain the other night to listen to a sleep CD, but it got drowned out by his snoring, so I gave up and went to the guest room, groggy and irritated, to try to catch some winks.

I have an irritating habit, I'm told, of announcing that "It's a brand new day!" every morning when I wake up. It usually means I'm getting up for the day. It can also mean, depending on the time and my energy level, that so are you. It was nice this today when, after my morning announcement, my husband got up shortly after I did and went down and made coffee for me. He'd been through my three-day sleep roller coaster with me, and knew that I wasn't going back to sleep. Sweet thing. Now he's downstairs, staring at the front door, cursing the paper boy for slacking off and not getting the paper here until 6am.

I've been an insomniac my whole life. I just never knew it until a doctor first prescribed Ambien for me. "You mean people sleep this long? Every night?" I asked. I was elated! My whole perspective on the world had changed. Don't get me wrong, I was still late for work every morning, that was a ritual based on procrastination. But during the day, I felt great! I could concentrate and focus, even after the coffee wore off. Eventually, I was banned at work from having more than one cup of coffee, because it made me too perky for everyone else to handle.

So thanks for nothin' lately, Ambien, but I know you'll come back to me. You always do. And my nights will once again be filled with blissful, restful, uninterrupted sleep.

But right now, it's time for more coffee.

All Hail the Thin Mint!

It’s Girl Scout cookie season. Mmmm… Not just cookies, Girl Scout cookies. My neighborhood Girl Scout delivered the goods yesterday, and they’re going so fast I swear those boxes are emptying themselves. Samoas, Tagalongs, Trefoils. And who can forget the queen of all Girl Scout cookies, the Thin Mint?
Regarding the Thin Mint, I learned an interesting fact this year. The tides are turning against it; one day soon, it may no longer be the best-selling Girl Scout cookie flavor. Could it happen this season?

I’ve felt guilty for years since my adulation for that thin, minty cookie has wavered in the wake of the increase in cookie flavors. I mean, what’s a Girl Scout cookie drive without the Thin Mint? It’s blasphemy to think of it! So I Googled “Girl Scout cookies,” just to make sure that those familiar green boxes are still being snapped up. Turns out they are, but other flavors are closing in.

The Thin Mint is still the number one-selling favorite of the masses, but only by a hair. In as many as four different rating scales, either for top-selling or best-tasting cookie, the Thin Mint was winning by only one percentage point, or less than a quarter of a star. The encroacher? The Samoa. Alas, it was with the advent of the Samoa cookie that I switched camps from the Thin Mint. That caramel-y, coconut-y chocolate-drizzled confection is a combination that is just too irresistible for me. I still buy a box of Thin Mints every year, but I usually get two boxes of Samoas. And some peanut butter Tagalongs, which come in a strong third in the race.

Even though I am among the turncoats who abandoned one of America’s best-loved cookies for a new love, I still respect the Thin Mint for all that it has done for the Girl Scouts, since the very first Girl Scout cookie sale in 1933.

Thin Mint, I salute you.