Harper's Island

I just finished watching the Harper's Island finale. I'd rewatched and gossiped and theorized enough that I wouldn't have been surprised no matter which of the suspects was the second killer. But I didn't see that last hour coming. It was weird and a bit of a let down. I'm going to have to think about the killers' motivations for a while. Mostly my reaction is "yeah, but...." It's disappointing because up to this point I really enjoyed the show. But the weak motivations make the whole thing feel pointless. In the real world murder may be stupid and pointless, but as part of a narrative all that death needs to have some sort of meaning.

I did it!

I've been going to a water arthritis class at the gym for almost two months now. The class is offered three times a week, and from the beginning my goal has been to make it to all three classes. This week I finally succeeded! The teacher today was a substitute, and I felt a little bad for her. We're a loosey-goosey group. It's more like herding cats than leading a typical exercise class. Our jaws get at least as much exercise as the rest of our bodies. But she still pushed us hard. I woke up sore this morning, and I was glad to get home after class and take a pill. And a nap. It was a lovely nap. :)

I'm worried about my friend Betty, though. Betty is a lady I met in the class and, like most everyone else who attends, she's at least in her seventies. Betty's a real character and was the first person to introduce herself when I started the class. She's known as the class troublemaker, because she's there for the gossip. Any exercise is strictly incidental! She didn't seem like her usual chipper self last Friday, and she hasn't been to class since. I found out the other day that she has some pretty serious back problems, and her doctor has told her no swimming. I suspect he doesn't really understand what we do in the class. It pretty low-intensity, and I can't imagine it would be harmful. If nothing else, the movement should help to keep her limber and moving. But I'm not a doctor. I just miss her in class and hope that she feels better soon. If you've got an extra minute, spare a good thought for my friend Betty. I'm sure she could use a few.

Funniest Thing EVER

I saw the funniest thing last week. I realize I'm showing my age here, but I am so sick of seeing droopy drawers everywhere I go. I feel like Denis Leary. PULL UP YOUR PANTS! So anyway, I'm driving down the street and come along a car that's apparently broken down. There are two guys behind it, pushing. As I'm coasting behind them, waiting for a chance to pass, one of the guys' pants start to fall down! So now he's waddling along behind the car, one hand on the bumper trying to push, and the other hand trying to hold up his pants! I just about lost it right there. What a perfect illustration of why this "fashion" trend is completely ridiculous.

Being Brave

One of the things you hear a lot about people with chronic diseases is how strong it makes them. That used to drive me nuts. "I'm only strong because I don't have a choice!" I'd think. "I want to be a wimp like everyone else!" But at two years in, I've discovered that there's a different side to all this.

It's not that I'm so strong. It's just that I've faced a lot of things that scare me, and I survived. That makes it easier to face your other fears. I've spent at least 10 hours in the dentist's chair this year. It's something I've needed to do for years, but I just kept avoiding it. On Friday I had a wisdom tooth removed. And you know what? None of it was a big deal. The extraction didn't even hurt. I wish I'd done it years ago.

Strangely, things that never used to bother me are the things that bring me the most anxiety these days. Before I got sick, I never had a problem leaving the house. I was always out somewhere- at the movies, meeting a friend for a meal, at the bookstore or just grocery shopping. Now leaving the house is an event. I plan carefully where I'm going, and half the time I put it off at the last minute.

So I guess I just appear strong because I no longer fear the things that healthy people do. Needles? No big. Medical tests? Bring it. The dentist? Been there, done that. But I still struggle. I still have fears. It's just that the things I fear are things that most healthy people take for granted. I think the lesson for me- for everyone- is to push through those fears and do it anyway. So far, nothing has been as bad as I thought it would be. Lately I've even started appearing in a bathing suit in public. After that, what else is there to be afraid of?

Easy Peasy

I'm happy to announce that I came through the wisdom tooth extraction with flying colors. I didn't even bother to take pain pills this morning- not even Tylenol- because it doesn't hurt! My cheek is ever so slightly puffy, and I have the tiniest shadow of a bruise, but that's it. I was told that the uppers are a lot easier to deal with than the lowers. It makes me feel pretty good about the next one that needs to come out (it's a lower), because even if it's more difficult than this one it could still be pretty easy.

The worst part of all of this has actually been dealing with the side effects of the pain medication they gave me. I haven't taken any in over 12 hours (it's supposed to last for 4 hours), and I still feel groggy and slightly nauseous. I was warned not to drive for at least 24 hours after taking my last dose, which is no problem because I laid in provisions and wasn't planning to go anywhere anyway. But that should have told me how rough this stuff would be. That and the fact that it was specially formulated with anti-nausea ingredients.

Well, writing and proofing this has taxed my brain about as much as I can stand right now, so I think I'll go back to bed and read some Amanda Quick!

Getting Ready

Tomorrow I'm having my cracked wisdom tooth removed. Yay! I'm not exactly looking forward to the expected pain, but I'll be glad when I can finally have something other than soft foods and can chew with both sides of my mouth.

I did a few things to get ready for the surgery and recovery. First, I cleaned out the fridge (boy did it need it) and caught up (sort of) with the dishes. I figure for at least the rest of the day tomorrow and Saturday I'm going to want to be able to fix myself something to eat with the least amount of hassle possible. In a little bit I'm going to make a bowl of jello. That should go down nicely. Tomorrow, since I'll be home all morning before the surgery, I plan to make a big batch of mashed potatoes and maybe some mac-n-cheese. That and instant oatmeal should get me through the first couple of days, no problem.

I also want to wash the linens tomorrow, so that I have nice clean sheets and towels to crawl into when I get home. And while I'm at it, I'm going to change the litter pan (aka My Favorite Chore Ever).

I picked up a couple of good books at the library this afternoon, including a Georgette Heyer and the latest Amanda Quick. I think the Quick will be my Saturday read. Her books are predictably enjoyable and enjoyably predictable. There are never any big surprises in the quality of the writing or in the plot lines. A good, not too challenging, comfort read should be just about my speed while hanging around the house on prescription pain meds. Whee!

I also picked up my prescriptions while I was out today. One of the four wasn't available. My doctor hadn't called in the refill even though I requested in Wednesday morning. I'm going to have to call and kick a little butt. I'm going to need this stuff by the end of the weekend. If I can't pick it up by noon I'm not going to have it. (The surgery is at 2.)

I was kind of surprised when they described everything they do to knock you out for a wisdom tooth extraction. First they give you laughing gas. Then once they've found a vein for the IV they use a numbing spray so you don't feel it, and then they hook you up to the IV and give you what's called Twilight Sleep. I've had it before. You aren't fully out, but you usually aren't terrible aware of what's going on around you, and many people don't remember much afterward. They offered me Valium to take ahead of time if I was nervous. I sat there listening to all of this and thinking "wimps!" I get IVs all the time. Never once has it been necessary to pre-drug me and then numb the area before insertion. Geeze Louise. I guess for an otherwise healthy person who has never had an IV before all that would be helpful. Especially if they were afraid of needles. I'm a little afraid of needles, but I've had to put on my big girl panties and deal with it in the last couple of years. You do what you've got to do and you move on with your day. No point in having a hissy about it. I'm already a little giggly coming out of Twilight Sleep, and prone to want to wander around looking at yarn. I wonder what kind of difference the laughing gas will make? I've never had it before.

So, soft foods, good books, all my meds (sort of), a couple of movies on the DVR, a handful of new dishcloth patterns and plenty of P&C, the worst of the chores taken care of, a ride to and from the surgery- it sounds like I'm ready to go!

Writing Rut

I'm in a rut. I've been working on the same book for two and a half years now. And yes, for two of those years I've had major health problems. But I'm really, really ready to move on, at least emotionally, even if the physical is struggling to catch up.

I feel like I'm in a rut with this story. The one note I get consistently from my critique group is "all dialog, no action." And they're right. That's how I write to begin with. As I edit this the pages I find myself cutting, cutting, cutting. The dialog rambles. It runs on for pages. It reveals stuff the audience doesn't need to know, either yet or ever. In the midst of all those cuts- sometimes half a page or more goes right out the window- I lose the idea of adding action and description. And that's just my major problem with the early chapters.

If feels like it's all info dump. But there's a lot of info that the various characters need. Daisy (and the audience) are totally new to this world. She needs to be told how everything works. Then we discover that Daisy has had some exposure to this world, and The Boss needs to know about it. Everything so far takes place in a beauty salon, except for a fight with her roommate, which exists illustrate how Daisy is an outsider with her own "people", so that we'll see clearly why she becomes so attached to her new situation and why she wouldn't just run for the hills at the first opportunity.

I've written up through the first major turning point. Daisy has done something that commits her to one side of the coming fight. My problem is, I don't know where to go from here. I picked up with this year's NaNo with a sub-plot. Someone comes to Daisy looking for help with an off the books job. I know more or less how that is going to resolve. I also know that it can't all happen in one blurp in the middle of the book. It's got to weave in with the other story lines. But for now, it's a blurp. I'll figure out how it weaves later. Being a sub-plot (although I think it's going to be a rather important one) the arc is much smaller. Less for the characters to do. That I'm not too worried about.

It's the continuation of the main plot that has me worried. There is an attack, and the group responds by.... I don't know. Counter attack would be an obvious plan. but counter attack who? There's no counter organization that they know of, all though there've been some fishy things happening lately. They don't have an id on the attackers. I guess they could work on that. But how? How do I want to have them figure it out? I don't want it to be cliche; I do want it to fit in with the world that I've built so far. There have to be multiple red herrings. More attacks on different fronts. The humans have formed their own little group- they could be a distraction.

Maybe I need to do some more work on my Big Bad. I know what she wants, I know some of what she's done or is doing to achieve it. Maybe I need to write a little bit more about her, figure out what she might see as a weakness to exploit or a danger to be eliminated. Maybe if I do that I will get a clearer picture of what comes next.

So far I've looked at this whole thing from Daisy's perspective. I've worked to put every obstacle I could in her path. Now, instead of thinking "what would be the worst thing that could happen to her now" I need to think "what's the best thing the opposition could do to reach their own goals right now."

Hmmm. Maybe that change in perspective will bounce me out of that rut.

Digging Out

I am not the worlds best housekeeper. My apartment is perpetually cluttered. There are books and papers and bills and knitting and yarn and piles of clean clothes and.... Basically everything you can imagine is scattered all over my living room. You can't even see the kitchen counters for the stacks of dirty dishes, and it's going to take some serious scrubbing to get all the burnt on gunk off the stove.

Usually I can step over, around, or through a mess and not even notice it's there. But this is beyond ignoring. So I'm taking advantage of this long weekend to try and shovel this place out. (I'm still not working, so a long weekend is really more psychological than anything. Except if I plan to do stuff at home I can avoid all the Memorial Day sales, and all those crowds. Plus, it's supposed to rain here all weekend, and I'm perfectly happy to avoid that, too.)

I'll be making a list shortly, but I'll spare you good people. I make my lists very detailed, so I feel like I'm really accomplishing something. (Very important when you generally speaking do nothing all day.) I've done a little bit already- washed a load of towels, cleaned the litter pan and took out the trash, and the dishwasher just finished. There will be many more loads of dishes and laundry, as well as much picking up and general organizing. I hope, by the end of the day on Monday, to be able to walk freely across the living room, not around stuff. I want all the laundry to be washed, folded, and put away. I want to be able to walk into the kitchen and cook anything I have the ingredients for, without checking to make sure the pan I need is clean. I want to be able to put my meal on the table without pushing things out of the way. And I want to be able to sit out the couch without moving stuff. (Except the cat. He sleeps where he will, and I can't be responsible for where he might choose to park it.) If I'm really, really on my game I might dust and even get out Troub's nemesis and vacuum the place.

The reality is the place will probably be just about as much a pit on Monday night as it is right now. But at least I have a goal. Even small changes will make my life easier and will make me happy. I'll let you know how it goes.

Shards of Miles

Recently I picked up Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold as an audiobook from Audible. Shards is the first book in the Vorkosigan series and covers the meeting of Miles's parents, Aral and Cordelia.

One thing that constantly amazes me when I go back and read (or listen to- I have all the Vorkosigan series available through Audible) earlier books in the series is how it's all there. The seed of Miles's personality is clearly there in both Aral and Cordelia. Aral runs right over his superiors and Cordelia considers herself socially awkward. He's constantly plotting and she's constantly charging into tight spots. It even cracks me up when Cordelia signs off on radio transmissions "Naismith out," just like her son will in 20 years or so. I never recognized these things the first time around. I wasn't familiar enough with the series. After listening to the other books umpteen times I'm even recognizing the names of soldiers who eventually become trusted armsmen in later books. No one appears from no where in this series. Even though the backdrop for these stories is all of space, the military and political society of Barrayar is a very small community. At this point in the series we know these people. If we've never met this particular character before then we know their father or uncle or something. It's as familiar as if we'd grown up there ourselves.

When I'm reading later books in the series I often find myself agreeing with Cordelia and some of the other more enlightened women of Miles's acquaintance who feel it's ridiculous to go through the dangers of a body birth when there are uterine replicators available. Duh. Who wouldn't? Except, whoops! We don't have those yet, do we? Sometimes I forget these books are only fiction.

Getting Lucky

The last couple of months have been extremely good reading time for me. Not only have some of my favorite authors come out with new books, but I've also discovered a couple of new favorite authors. I usually discover a new author that I really love about once, maaaaybe twice, a year. To have discovered two authors that I really love within the last 6 weeks or so is practically a miracle. Both authors write mystery series, and I've been scarfing them down as fast as humanly possible.

Some of the books I've particularly enjoyed recently are:

Bone Crossed- Patricia Briggs- This one wasn't as good as previous Mercy books, but still highly enjoyable.

What I Did For Love- Susan Elizabeth Phillips- I didn't particularly care for her last book, but this one was really good. SEP's characters are always flawed, sometimes seriously so, but by the end of the book you feel like they've grown as people and accepted each other, warts and all.

The Sharing Knife: Horizon- Lois McMaster Bujold- The only thing I didn't like about this book is that it neatly wrapped up a lot of loose ends for Fawn and Dag. This series was LMB's experiment in crossing the fantasy and romance genres. Now that the two main characters have found their happy ending, the series seems to be at an end. I hope she decides that she has more stories to tell in the world, because I really enjoy it. Of course, she could set a story in the local A&P, with a plot line consisting of what she needs to pick up for dinner tonight, and I'd still enjoy it.

Audrey, Wait!- Robin Benway- This one was just fun. If you want to analyse it, there was a lot of subtext- the American fascination with fame, our willingness to be famous for being famous, how fame messes with your head and your relationships. But mostly it was just a lot of fun. It's YA, so those of us 30-somethings who like teeny bopper TV and movies will totally enjoy it.

Graceling- Kristin Cashore- A fantasy with excellent world and character building. YA, more because of the ages of the protagonists rather than any simplicity in storyline. Some children are born with particular talents, or Graces. Those Graces can be just about anything. Those who have a Grace that is useful to the King become his to use in whatever way benefits him. Those with useless Graces are sent home to their families, where they become a burden because the general population fears them. A follow up book, which is actually a prequel, is scheduled for this fall, giving us more info about Graceling's baddie and where he may have come from. I've already got it on my wishlist for birthday/Christmas.

Endless Blue- Wen Spencer- Another really interesting world. It's a wild place, filled with shipwreck victims of different cultures and species, escaped bioengineered creatures, and land masses that float through the air. When Mikhail chooses to crash land in this place on purpose he has no idea what he'll find, if there's anything there to find, or if he'll ever be able to get out. The world building and set up was very good, but it felt like the author lost steam in the last quarter to third of the book. There were logical errors, and the whole thing just seemed to wrap up too quickly. The main characters all decided to return to the outside world for various reasons. But what made this story so interesting is that the sphere in which they were all trapped had developed a very Swiss Family Robinson society. Stuff would wash up, they'd rig what they had as best they could, and keep on going. The genetically engineered differences in the human population and the outright alien species encountered made for much more exciting reading than the bits of shipboard life we got to see before the crash. If Spencer decides to revisit this world, which I hope she does, I hope she focuses within the sphere and on trying to figure out where it came from and who created it. The politics of the outside world were of no interest to me at all.

Turn Coat- Jim Butcher- Another really good one from Jim Butcher. Some have complained that there wasn't enough forward movement in the overall story arc. I don't agree. One knowing spy is exposed, one unknowing spy is exposed (which cause fall out for Harry later on), bad things happen for Thomas (which I also expect to bleed into Harry's relationship with him in the next few books), an important Warden dies, and the Black Council finally begins to show themselves. I particularly enjoyed Ancient Mai's reaction when she realized that Harry has a Foo Dog. The Dresden Files are always a good read, and I fully expect them to continue to be so.

Impossible- Nancy Werlin- This one really blew my mind. Not because the story was particularly good, although I did like it. The premise is so out there, I can't believe that it hasn't been done before. I can't believe I didn't think of it myself! Are you familiar with the folk song "Scarborough Fair"? Simon and Garfunkel did a famous version of it in the 70's, but it's been around for a lot longer. If you listen carefully to the lyrics, it's a list of impossible tasks given to a lover. Another version of the song is called "The Elfin Knight". So what if the song is a riddle, handed down through a family as a way to teach the next generation what they must do to break an Elf's curse? The simplicity of the idea, and the fact that it was all there if you just bother to look for it, really just boggles me. Not that the author didn't make a few changes to tailor the song to the story she wanted to tell. But still. Makes you wonder what other stories I've been looking right past.

The Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne mysteries by Julia Spencer-Fleming- I've read 5 out of the 6 books in this series in the last couple of weeks. The first two books were excellent. Books three and four weren't so great. The author was trying something different in these two, and while I respect her for experimenting, they didn't work for me. Book five was really good again, and book six is waiting for me at the library. The mysteries in these books are pretty good, but the very best part is the developing relationship between Clare and Russ. The author has moved the relationship forward in the last couple of chapters of each of the books, which hooks you and makes you want to read the next book to see what happens between them.

The Lady Julia Grey mysteries by Deanna Raybourn- I read all three of these books in less than a week. These are fabulous, and I can't recommend them enough. Again, it's not the mysteries themselves that hook you in with this series, it's the relationship between Julia and Brisbane. Raybourn will have a stand alone mystery and another Julia Grey coming out next year. I can't wait.