Various Updates

1. The puppy is alive. My sister decided that she couldn't bring herself to put her down just yet. She consulted with the vet and they are going to try her on crate rest and pain medication for 6 weeks to give her more time to heal. She'll be using a sling to help her walk when she takes her out for potty breaks. This dog is 9 months old and over 60 pounds, so...

2. My mom went to a diagnostic clinic this week to talk to someone about a tremor she's got and about some other issues she's been having. She called me today to tell me that the doctor told her she's got Parkinson's in stage 2. She seemed very upset about it, which I kind of get except she had already been diagnosed with Parkinson's before, so I guess I missed something. That's what happens when your family doesn't correspond/interact/etc. with you for weeks on end?

Anyway, the conversation went a little something like this:

Her: Well, they said I've got Parkinson's.
Me: Oh, OK, well at least you know what you're dealing with and hopefully they have some good ideas on how to treat it.
Her: You better just watch out because you're going to get it too. It runs in families and you already shake, so you've got it to look forward to and your life is going to be hell.
Me: OK...well, I guess I'll add that to the list. Did you tell your doctor that you worked around pesticides for a long time?
Her: Yeah, you inherited your momma's big butt and now this! Oh I showed her my work history and everything.

And you know what's funny? It totally didn't register that I had just been insulted until later in the day. I think this is due in part to my Topamax regimen (brain fog has set in BIG time) and in part to this kind of thing being commonplace. Usually she hits my sisters with it more than me maybe because I'm more apt to snap back without even batting an eye, but she totally slipped one in on me today. Score one for mom!

Such is life in Crazyville.

3. Did I mention the brain fog? Yeah. To the extent that I pick up the phone to call someone and if I don't get them and hang up the phone I can't remember if I've called them or if I've left them a message or if I've just thought about calling them. It's like Groundhog Day all day long in my head. And I just had an 8 day long headache in spite of it all. I'm still not up to the full dosage strength, but I'm going to tough it out until after I see my doctor again on the 10th. Up until the 8 day long headache, things were going swimmingly. Maybe now that I've broken out of that, things will go back to normal.

Also, if you try to have a conversation with me and I can't hold one, I'm sorry. I can think the words, but something gets lost between the thinking and the saying sometimes if I can't give the conversation my full concentration. I'm really smarter than I look. Or at least I used to be. :)

4. Because I never post pictures, here's a funny one. We decorated a coworker's cube for her birthday. Here is a picture of me with her new boyfriend. (Please note that he is NOT anatomically correct! He is not that kind of guy. What do you take him for?!) We did dress him later, but I didn't take a picture with him after I dressed him, so this is the best I could do.

TBRs

Lisa at Books Lists Life asked to see our TBR shelves. She has lots of TBRs! I thought I did too, but then I saw hers. ;) Kidding! I've actually done a pretty good job of whittling down my stack over time. The way I've done this is that I have stopped joining book boxes at bookcrossing.com. Such willpower!

Anyhow, I'm down to only two shelves now! Here they are.



I took the picture with my phone, so the quality isn't great. Terribly sorry. I would have opened the window to let more natural light in, but the biggest spider of all time has set up housekeeping on the other side of that window and I'd rather not have to wet myself for the sake of a picture. I love you, but I don't LOVE you. Know what I mean?

They aren't really organized in any particular way except the ones in the lower right hand corner that have little square stickers on the bottom of the spines are bookcrossing books that have already been crossed. That means that I should really go ahead and read them and move them along to someone else, but for various reasons, I haven't gotten around to doing that yet. In some cases, those are series books and I'm not to that point in the series yet, etc. Other than that, they are "arranged" willy-nilly. I spy two Gregory Maguire books on two different shelves. Do you? If it makes you OCD folks feel better, the CS Lewis books appear to all be grouped together in a clump.

My TBRs have their own bookcase. My permanent collection books have their own bookcase. My "other" books (books that I may or may not have read, books that will not remain with me but will be given away) have their own bookcase. That's how my books are organized -- on a macro level, not on a micro level.

Truth be told, I have a few stragglers in the living room, but I can't put them on the shelf yet because they aren't registered yet. There is a method to my madness, it just doesn't involve alphabetization or organizing them by genre. :)

:(

I learned today that my sister is having to have her puppy put to sleep today. Please keep her family in your prayers -- her dogs are her babies much like mine are, so this will be a tough time for her.

Her pup ruptured the ligaments in both of her back legs due to a genetic disorder and the specialist vet she took her to said that even with corrective surgery, the same thing would probably start happening in her other joints. Since she was in so much pain, they had to make the decision to go ahead and put her to sleep.

This is one of the puppies that came from the litter that my dad rescued late last year.

In fact, pray right now...I'm texting back and forth with her and she's having a really tough time going back and forth about whether or not she can make herself even take her in to be put to sleep. She knows she needs to, but she's just struggling.

Wonderous Words Wednesday (12)

Here are my words for this week. Check out Bermuda Onion's site for more Wonderous Words.

I finally finished Diana Gabaldon's Dragonfly in Amber, so these are my final words from that book.

rapacious: (adj.)given to seizing for plunder or the satisfaction of greed.

Jamie had acceded to this request, as he harbored suspicions that Old Simon might well be capable of appropriating the big horse, should Donas come within reach of his rapacious grasp. -- page 777

acumen: (n.) keen insight; shrewdness

The Young Fox might lack his father's years, but he had a good bit of his sire's acumen. -- page 786

Encomium: (n.) a formal expression of high praise.

Captain Randall said you were a most diverting woman. Quite an encomium from the Captain, you know. -- page 826

Baldachins: (n.) A rich fabric of silk and gold brocade.

The canopied bed stood on a small dais, with baldachins of ostrich feathers sprouting from the corners of its damask drapes, and a pair of matching brocaded chairs squatted comfortably before a huge fireplace. -- page 831

Definitions are from dictionary.com

Wonderous Words Wednesday (11)

My unfamiliar words this week all came from Diana Gabaldon’s Dragonfly in Amber which I really MUST finish soon because it’s getting badly beaten up in my purse. Whoops. To see other Wonderous Words, visit Bermuda Onion’s site.

Alembics: (n.) An apparatus consisting of two vessels connected by a tube, formerly used for distilling liquids.

Then he made up his mind, and turned toward the stone table where his alembics simmered, jerking his head at me to follow. – page 290.

Acolyte: (n.) an altar attendant in public worship.

I blinked several times before I was able to locate Raymond, crouched cautiously at the foot of his ossuary like the resident acolyte. – page 291.

Laconically: (adv.) using few words; expressing much in few words; concise: a laconic reply.

“Och, aye,” the little clansman answered laconically. – page 318.

Gendarmerie: (n.) Slang A group of police officers.

I hardly thought a footpad or other miscreant would be staggering down an alleyway shouting for the gendarmerie, though in my present state of shock, almost nothing would have surprised me. – page 322

Saturnine: (adj.) sluggish in temperament; gloomy; taciturn.

My hand went to the crystal at my neck, and I stroked it ostentatiously as the Comte, with no sign of perturbation on his saturnine features, dug into the trout with almonds. – page 328

Peregrinations: (n.) travel from one place to another, esp. on foot.

Jamie made a move as though to join His Lordship in his random peregrinations about the cottage, but was restrained by my grip on his collar. – page 631

Abattoir: (n.) a slaughterhouse.

The triage station of any field hospital always bears a strong resemblance to an abattoir, and this was no exception. – page 644

Serried: (adj.) pressed together or compacted

In fact, a shout from the nearby Highlanders drew my attention at this point, and I looked up to see Red Jamie himself, strolling across the grass, waving absently to the men as he scanned the serried rocks behind the palace. – page 692

Definitions came from dictionary.com.

Facebook Follies: Day 1

Did I mention that my mother joined FB? Oh I did? That's right! Anyway, she joined and immediately forgot her password. So she used the "reset password" option, but the security settings on their computer filtered the auto-response out. (My theory)

So then she e-mailed "the Facebook people" and "proved that she's who she says she is" (I have no idea what this involved) and still couldn't get in. So I asked her if she tried to get in using her other computer. They have so many different security programs on their computer that it's a wonder they can access anything. I pull my hair out every time I visit. Apparently that did the trick, because today she was back in business. And today she posted this little jewel:



...as a status update.

She's just getting warmed up, my friends.

Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult

Danger! There may be spoilers ahead (depending on your definition of spoiler). Enter at your own risk!

That being said, this was my August book club book.

I respect this author a great deal because she takes deeply distressing and important social issues and makes them incredibly readable. I think she has done a lot for women's fiction and helped it move beyond books that feature a bare chested Fabio on the cover.

I thought this book was going to be about a woman who had to deal with the heartache of having her child and husband murdered and that the only thing that kept her going in the aftermath would be her (yet) unborn child. I knew that the story was going to hinge on that second child growing up and needing a heart transplant. And I knew that the murderer (on death row) was going to offer his heart to the child.

I thought that the story was going to be about the mother wrestling with whether she would let her child accept the heart of someone she viewed as being evil. It touched on that, but just barely.

It was really more about the Gnostic gospels, specifically the Gospel of Thomas, and moral issues surrounding the death penalty.

The main character, Shay, is on death row for killing a child and her step-father and his lawyers are fighting for him to be killed by hanging rather than lethal injection so he will be able to donate his organs. In order to do this, they have to prove that he believes that donating his heart will save his soul -- and that's where Gnosticism comes in. Though it's a "dead" religion, it's a religion that doesn't lend itself to being organized and states that everyone finds his own way to salvation, so what judge can say that he's not practicing a religion?

There's a lot of symbolism. Shay accidentally performs miracles while he's in prison. The water in the prison turns to wine, he heals the sick, multiplies food, seemingly resurrects the dead, and as these stories start to leak, people start to gather outside the prison believing that he is the messiah, though he never says he is.

The story is told through four different voices which coorespond to the voices of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the Bible. Shay never gets a voice of his own and at the end of the book, Picoult explains that this is because the messiah figure in the Bible (Jesus) didn't tell his own story either. Others told it for Him.

It was an interesting story, and I'm glad I read it, but it will not go down in history as my favorite Picoult novel. The religious and courtroom drama aspects of it got a little tiresome for me.

Wonderous Words Wednesday (10)

To see more Wonderous Words, check out Bermuda Onion's page.

These words all came from Diana Gabaldon's Dragonfly in Amber.

Inamorata: (n.) a woman who loves or is loved; female sweetheart or lover.

The strength of true love had been tried severely this evening according to Charles, by his inamorata's devotion to her pet, a rather ill-tempered monkey that reciprocated His Highness's dislike and had more concrete means of demonstrating its opinions. -- page 215

Chirurgeon: (n.) a surgeon.

One chirurgeon referred to him routinely -- out of Mother's hearing-- as "that revolting rat," another as "the smelly rabbit," and one small, tubby truss-maker greeted him qutie openly as "Monsieur le Dishcloth." -- page 227

Bilboquet: (n.) The toy called cup and ball.

Jamie was holding a bilboquet in one hand, and had the other poised over one eye. -- page 232




Definitions are from dictionary.com.

Do We Live in a DadGum Rainforest?

I really think this weather is some kind of cosmic joke. Remember how yesterday I said I was going to work on chopping down the backyard wilderness like Daniel Boone (did Daniel Boone chop stuff down?)? I donned my coon skin cap and I got the trimmer to work on the first try, nonsense levers and all (I am smarter than I look!). I worked for over an hour and then I thought that maybe since it was raining and thundering and lightning, and I had grass all caught up in that fancy piece of machinery, I should stop. All that being said, I made my way through about half of my yard.

But seriously. There is no reason why it should be raining in August. My grass should be good and dead by now, but NOOOOOO, it has to rain every other day. I am outraged.

And when I got finished, I had an e-mail from my ex-boyfriend saying that he just couldn't stand to see me working that hard and that I just need to leave the gate open so he can come weed eat it for me while I'm at work. (Did I mention he's my neighbor and that he was watching the whole spectacle through the fence?) I told him no and he said he was going to throw me some work gloves over the fence (because I have blisters on my hands now) and I told him no because Butter will eat them. I should throw Butter over HIS fence, seeing as how he's the reason I have her. But that's a story for a different time.

And that's how exciting my life is.

Because This Requires Less Effort...

than running laps around the building.

Do you ever have days when you feel completely restless? My mind will not be still. I'm at work, granted. But I finished two weeks worth of work in, OH, three days. So I'm bored. I should really learn to stretch out my work so that I look busy when I'm not, but I really have no use for that. I've even sought out busy work. I made up check lists for the work I did and trained someone else on how to do it. I've contacted my customer repeatedly to try to see if they've been able to audit my work (it's like pulling teeth to get in touch with them).

So here I sit, restless.

I realized yesterday that I haven't started on my book club book yet and we are meeting to discuss it next Monday. Oops! I'm all engrossed in a different (900 paged!) book at the moment, but I suppose I'll tear myself away long enough for my assigned reading.

The boy brought me his dad's DR Trimmer thingy this weekend so I can try to tackle my back yard. He pantomimed how it works yesterday and I looked at him crazy. There are about fifty-seven levers you have to push and pull this way and that and a "clutch" and a "throttle" and other such nonsense words. I was not taking notes. It's going to take several different sessions, I'm sure. I need servants. Plain and simple. I am not cut out for sweating. Or spiders. You should have seen the size of the ones I saw when I mowed the little section I got to the other day. *shudder*

In other news, I believe my bronchitis may be getting slightly better. I still usually don't sleep all the way through the night without a coughing fit, but the fits usually don't last as long as they had been. Antibiotics are my friend, as much as I hate taking them.

Know what's also my friend? The three hour Sunday afternoon nap. :) So nice. I would seriously consider moving to some siesta-taking country where naps are the norm. Hablo Espanol!

OK, I guess I'll go start on my reading now. (Voy a leer!)

Wonderous Words Wednesday (9)

I have several Wonderous Words Wednesday words this week. To see the words that other people have come across in their reading this week, go check out Bermuda Onion’s site.

All of my words this week are from Diana Gabaldon’s Dragonfly in Amber.

Fomented: (v.) to instigate or foster (discord, rebellion, etc.)

Well, if risings were fomented in taverns, perhaps they could be stopped over dinner tables. – page 131


Portentously: (adj.) ominously significant or indicative

“The Comte, Madame, has a very bad reputation,” she said portentously. – page 131

Impecunious: (adj.) having little or no money; penniless; poor.

Prince Charles Edward Casimir, etc. Stuart was residing, biding his time while waiting to see what Louis would or would not do for an impecunious cousin with aspirations to a throne. – page 138

Bonhomie: (n.) frank and simple good-heartedness; a good-natured manner; friendliness; geniality.

An expression of alert calculation lurked at the back of his bright brown eyes, behind the smooth bonhomie that oiled his transactions. – page 146

Two for one special!

Hove: (v.) to utter laboriously or painfully

Abaft: (preposition) to the rear of.

A vision in watered aqua silk hove abaft our resting place, in loud raptures over the divinity of the play the night before. – page 178

Another two for one special!

Mellifulous: (adj.) sweetly or smoothly flowing; sweet-sounding

Amatory: (adj.) of or pertaining to lovers or lovemaking; expressive of love.

By contrast, the gentleman pigeon doing his turn a few feet from my nose had a low and mellifluous coo, rising from a deep, amatory rumble to a breathy whistle as he puffed his breast and bowed repeatedly. – page 179

Definitions are from dictionary.com

Medicated and (Un)Motivated

I've been fighting sinus junk for over a week and after I coughed myself sick in the middle of the night last night, I decided to break down and go to the doctor.

Sinus infection and bronchitis, you know, the usual. (Are there people in the world who actually just get colds and get better? Or is that a myth?) I'm glad I'm not contagious, (I knew I wasn't b/c like I said, this is the usual.) but must my respiratory system fail me?

So I've procured some antibiotics and some Mucinex-D (Hate the stuff! Can't sleep when I'm on it.) I also asked about doing something different about my migraines. I take prescription stuff when I get one and it usually works pretty well, but it's about $25 per pill (ask me if I love my health insurance) and when you have migraines several times a week....let's just say it's not a great option.

So she put me on Topamax to try to prevent migraines. Anybody tried it? Thoughts about it? I'll start it tonight. I've got to work up to a maintenance dose, so I'll start out slow and get to the dosage she wants me on in about a month.

One of the side effects is weight loss. And this is a problem...how, exactly?! Sign me up for a double dose!

Horror Story!

My mother just joined Facebook for some unknown reason. Oh. My. Gosh. My sister called me to warn me after her daughter sent her a text message saying "Maw Maw is on FB? What the hell??"

This is very disconcerting. What is the etiquette for declining one's mom's friend request?

OK, I know, I have to accept her. Maybe I'll just assign her to her own little friend category and restrict her access. Anyway, I'm not allowed to add her until my sister gets back in town and has time to delete any "you're turning into your mother" comments she has left on my other sister's page. She said we might even need to have a conference call about this.

Shouldn't there be an age limit on social networking sites?

And in case you're wondering, yes it IS that big of a deal. The reasons are too numerous to mention.