Thoughts and Musings

A Morning to Review

At home this morning. Today is Rachel's day home from school, and Phyllis is having car problems. At the beginning of the school year, we made the decision to keep Rachel home one day a week. This came about because she had been so exhausted on Thursday and Friday that therapy had become a wasted effort. Lethargic and unfocused, she also slept more, sometimes up to 16 hours on Friday night.

The change has been dramatic. Since she's been resting on Wednesday, she's been alert and happy on Thursdays and Fridays, and her sleeping patterns have returned to normal.

It's not as easy on us, however. We reworked all the schedules so that Kim takes over most of the afternnon care, while Phyllis does weekends, Wednesdays, and one afternoon. It maxes out their hours, so it's harder to ask one or the other to fill in.

So...I'm at home, doing what I can via email and reviewing a few things in my life. Also cleaning.

And here's a blast from my past. A friend of mine found this in some of her stuff. I just call it "Cat, ca. 1978."

Thanks

I appreciate hearing from everyone who's asked about my mom as well as other parts of my life. You are awesome.

My mom is still improving, if not yet back to baseline. I tried to call her yesterday, but she'd gone to the mailbox. While this is not a big chore to most of us, last week she had trouble getting to the kitchen, much less out the door. So much of her strength has returned, even though she has to take a lot of rest breaks.

She's made the decision not to go back on any treatment for her lung ailment and her doctor concurs. The treatment is, obviously, much worse than the illness. My brother will come down in February and they will discuss options for her living arrangments heading into the future. I think Mother would like to stay put as long as possible, in her own home, but some of the assisted living facilities do intrigue her. We'll see.

My bit of career news is that Steeple Hill accepted the revised version of FACE OF DECEIT (aka CLUES), and we're moving toward line edits. I'm still working on No. 3 even though they've not asked for a full manuscript as of yet. I have hopes! THE MISSING SANDALS is, like the other two, set in Mercer, New Hampshire. This time, police chief Tyler Madison is the hero. More on that later.

Thanks, again, for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers. I know what a difference this makes. So does Mother. :)

Mom Update

At Mother's now, and she's headed for bed. She's still weak, but she looks healthier than she has since she went on the meds that have made her so sick. All tests, including the bloodwork, were negative, so it's pretty clear it was just the meds.

Tomorrow I'm going to do some shopping and cleaning for her, so I should have a better picture of how she's doing.

I did get a bit of career news today, but I'll save that for later. I think Mother had the right idea about an early bedtime...

Quick Update

Just talked to my mom. She's home and sounding a lot better. The tests were negative, so apparently her problems were a result of these intense drugs she's been on. She just needed sedated rest, food, and lots of fluids, which she got via IV. More later when I get there. Looks like my weekend will be mostly talking, shopping, and cooking.

And gratitude. :)

Just a Quick One

Thanks to everyone who's noticed I'm back - and I truly appreciate all the prayers for my mom. I haven't been able to get in touch with my mom or my brother, so I don't know how the tests turned out. I'll try to post when I do.

I'm going down to Alabama to spend the weekend with her, so I don't know how often I'll get to blog, but will try.

More later. Love to you all.

Best Laid Plans...

I truly meant to blog yesterday, mostly because of the irony in the day for me. It would have been my grandmother's 106th birthday, and my mom went into the hospital for tests. It's also the birthday of a dear friend. The major test for my mom (an endoscopy) will be this morning at 11. They hope to send her home this afternoon as they wait for results, but it'll all depend on how she's handled the rigor of the test. My brother did say she sounded better last night after all day on an IV drip, so that's good news.

My mom is 81, just two years younger than my grandmother when she died. Mortality is on her mind a lot these days, so we talk about it. One thing I've always cherished about my mom is her sense of the practical and her honesty about life. She kept in mind our ages, but she never hid the hard stuff from my brother and me - she just showed us how faith and family can pretty much get you through anything.

I guess that's why I'm always bewildered by people who want to ignore the darker side of life. They want to turn away and not deal with even some of the bigger issues in our lives that aren't pleasant. I've actually had people say to me that they don't want to be "corrupted" by certain images.

I've never understood this. Images can't corrupt you, whether it's a flattened photo on your computer or a scene on the street. It's your response to them that's corrupting. And, no, I'm not being naive. I've been down the dark paths. I've seen things that most people never will. And I've been around a lot of people who've let themselves become corrupted by things they've seen or been asked to do. But that happened because they weren't prepared; their hearts and minds were caught unaware and unprepared for the harsher sides of life.

In too many ways, I think we've sanitized our lives and our surroundings. The danger in this is that we go through life totally unprepared for the hard things that inevitably happen in every life. Too many times, I've seen distraught parents on tv after their teen has been hurt or killed in an accident saying, "I just never thought this would happen." My question is always, "Why not? Do you really think you're immune?"

Don't get me wrong. I am not a pessimist who walks around thinking about the Four Horsemen all the time. Most days, I go through life like most folks, just hanging on and doing the best I can, working hard, and laughing with my friends. But I know what can happen, and when I turn to God and His Word, I know that what's there can prepare me for almost anything. God . . . and my mom.

Priorities

Sometimes I can't believe how lazy I can be about the simplest of things. (House cleaning notwithstanding.) Take my MySpace page, for instance. I know it could be a great promotional tool for the books, but I find myself loathing the time I'd need to spend to learn how. The same thing with redecorating anything in my house. Every time I get the urge to move furniture, I suddenly remember how much I need to work on anything else but the house.

Like this blog. My friend Sunny has a great eye for detail and spends a great deal of time working on her house. Sometimes I get a little jealous, but then I remember the dog needs to go out. Kim, who is Sunny's niece and Rachel's caregiver, commented that Sunny focuses on her house in her downtime, whereas I write and promote, and judge contests. I shouldn't be so hard on myself because I can't do both and still have a day job.

Maybe so. Sunny's goal is to have a great house. Mine is to have a great writing career. So, while I haven't touched the MySpace page since I set it up, I have spent a lot of time this month entering contests, preparing proposals, and working on the next book. Between dog walks, that is.

Sometimes, I realize that God made our bodies crave sleep so we COULDN'T do it all. After all, setting the right priorities is one step toward gaining wisdom and understanding how God has put our lives together to best serve each other - and Him.

Lazy Day, almost

When I look outside, the brilliant sunshine and cloudless day make me think that it should be balmy, even tropical, outside. It was, in fact, 14 degrees when I got up this morning. My flannel jammies STILL feel like just the thing to wear all day, although I have changed the top...well, there are just certain things a girl must put on before answering the door for the cute (REALLY cute) FedEx guy.

He was bringing my RITA entries. Yes, it's one of those "I said yes" things. I'm one of the first round judges for both the Golden Heart and RITA contests this year. I've now received all entries, and am thrilled to see that I know not a single author among them. Thrilled because now I don't have to write RWA and decline any of them. I won't judge my friends in a contest of this note.

But I am in the right mood for judging. Yesterday I finished Cassandra King's QUEEN OF BROKEN HEARTS on CD, and it's set my mind to that mode. I truly enjoyed this book, and there were parts of it that charmed me as much as THE SUNDAY WIFE did. I adored THE SUNDAY WIFE. I tried SAME SWEET GIRLS, but I couldn't get into it as much, probably because of my own preferences instead of the quality of the writing, which was generally good.

Unfortunately, I found myself doing something that was distinctly unfair to King. I wound up comparing one element of her work to Dorothy Dunnett - a process unfair to most any other writer on the planet, dead or alive. For me, Dunnett is the queen, especially when it comes to NOT FLINCHING.

Y'see, most writers, myself included, write our hearts out. We pour ourselves into our work, telling the best story we can. But when it comes to the hard stuff, that moment when the logical outcome lies before you, harsh and unyielding, the moment when you KNOW how real life would resolve it, we flinch. Instead of "real," we opt for "fiction." The happy ending. The villain is punished, and all's well that end's well. Sometimes it works; sometimes it betrays and weakens the story.

Dunnett never does, she NEVER flinched, and even wrote about that. There came a moment, I think in CHECKMATE, if my memory is sound today, where she didn't want to do what had to be done. She wanted to flinch. Her husband encouraged her to stay true to the story, to write the "real." She did, and it's the most powerful, memorable, "throw the book against the wall" moment in the whole Lymond series.

Every time I sit down to write, I keep that in mind. No, given the genre in which I write, I cannot always do that. But I can as much as possible, with the ulitmate goal of writing that book of my heart, the one that's honest and real and may never find a market. But, then again, it just might.

In the meantime, I keep writing . . . and reading.

187 Pennies

The past three months have been pretty rough for me. On the surface, everything was cooking along fine, just the usual stresses. Underneath, I was clinging with my fingernails. I said Yes to way too much. I did a show, a contata, and the major revision on my novel, as well as shopping for Christmas. I spent too much, more than I have in years. I had a major fight with a friend, which has changed our relationship forever. And I got a dog, the first pet I've had since 1995.

The result was I shut down, mentally and emotionally, withdrawing not only from this blog but from friends and family, and had to do some catch up there after Christmas. My mother has been desperately ill the past week and last weekend, the cousin who was closer to her than a brother died.

I sound like a bad country song, don't I?

But some where in that miasma of happenings, "$1.87" kept coming back to my mind, circling back there as a reminder not of where I am now but where I've been.

Late in 2003, following a period when Rachel had been so sick I couldn't work, my checking account got down to $1.87, with no money coming in for at least 3 weeks. That's it. I had no back-up, no savings, no insurance. All the financial assets I had to my name was that 187 pennies. But I had food in the pantry, and we hunkered down and made it through, mostly from God's help and good friends than my sense of perseverance.

When you've been in that position, a three-month cycle of depression can whack you upside the head, but it does not defeat you.

So I'm back, with some changes in mind. I signed up to walk a half-marathon in April, so I'm walking with the dog every day. More light, more sun, more movement. And I'm working intently on entering MURDER in contests and trying to finish the third book, in case Steeple Hill wants it.

And...if all goes according to plan...blogging more.

But we all know what they say about the best laid plans....
:)