Gimme an Asteroid, Sunny-side Up

Weird stuff to ponder on a weekend morning: What plans should we make for our appointment with an asteroid Tuesday afternoon?

I have a freelance writing deadline that day: Will it matter if I make it? The looming asteroid stimulates Hamlet questions. Is it nobler to spend the weekend nose-to-grindstone, honoring my commitment in hopes of a future? Or should I shine it on? Shall I take arms against a sea of oppressors and their outrageous fortunes, go Occupy somewhere, or should I go to the movies?

Seriously, folks, I’m going to see Puss In Boots before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

Now, after that peek through a window in my silly mind, here’s another, hot off the press. It was provoked by this week’s Poetry Jam prompt (more sneak peeks here).

Window


What hides from the outside world
behind her face festooned with flowers
might be the prick of the poisoned rose
or worse
the clatter of cloven hooves
as her demons cook their dinner
with this day’s torments

You never know
what gingham curtains veil
what beast exhales
behind that convivial cloak
willing you to leave
frightened by the light
you stand in so bravely

Disaster!

My computer was DESTROYED Monday in a freak accident, along with the rest of my electronics, when my beloved husband set a hose-end sprinkler outside my office window and 20 minutes later discovered the hose had gone ROGUE and was VIGOROUSLY shooting into the window, watering my desk!!!! And a houseful of guests were about to arrive for a Labor Day barbecue and croquet game.

The resulting collision of water and electricity blew the circuit breaker and fried everything, including all the files relating to four stories I must turn in tomorrow to my magazine publisher. Everything is kaput...laptop, copier, scanner, printer, photo editing software...

But I'm blessed!!!! My hard drive survived, so the nice tech guy salvaged my files and they're somewhere inside this external hard drive if I can figure out how to extract them. I had accident insurance, so God knows when eventually I'll be reimbursed for my laptop. There's some money in savings to buy this here unconfigured cheap empty frustrating replacement computer and a new printer. I'm still married too (although I can't get my hubby to come out from under the bed where's he's been hiding since yesterday).

We had to scrap the croquet game yesterday, due to my driving need to get my computer to the tech store for a diagnostic, but we had a nice meal with our family anyway. I'm thankful to have a 12-Step program that keeps me from wigging out when crap happens. I didn't make anyone's life miserable yesterday or today, including my own. So blessings on your day, take a minute to back up your hard drive if you haven't done it in a while, and watch out for rogue sprinklers. I'm off to set up a new printer and wrestle me a grizzly or two...

Invasion of Disgusting Bugs!

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.

~ Victor Hugo

So there I was, getting ready to go to sleep in peace after my first, full day of being “up and at ‘em” since getting sick. I thought, “Just a quick glance at the basil pots, see if I’ve missed any snails.” So out to the patio I shuffled in my slippers, flashlight in hand.

A strange sheen on the leaves of the potted plants underneath the crepe myrtle tree greeted me. Hm. I reached out and rubbed a finger on a leaf, an act that met with sticky resistance. Oh, dear. I got a bad feeling about this. I aimed the flashlight up into the crepe myrtle, and OMG! An infestation of something insectoid, adults and eggs all over the underside of leaves, dripping with bug juice.

There went my desire for sleep. I wish to don my black leather killing gear and launch an all-out assault on the crepe myrtle. If those bugs travel to my dahlias, it’s over. But reality chimed in: It’s late and you’re tired, Chrissie-poo. You don’t know what they are or what treatment will destroy them. And no, you may not grab the axe and chop down the tree.

So there I am, hitting Google, sleuthing with anxiety. So there God is, awake as promised by Victor Hugo. God is a gardener, did you know? The original gardener. My sorrow ranks among the small ones, so I ask him please keep an eye on things. I’m going to have to let this go until tomorrow. I will wade into the insect army single-handed at dawn, Backyard Ramba with both barrels firing!


About the photo: Not copyrighted, not taken by me, not even the insect that infests my tree, but something similar is afoot.

Cat Humor

I am simply blown away by how many little flying bugs are out tonight. When I came home from dinner with friends at twilight, a plague of no-see-ums was waiting at my house to assault me on the short walk to the front door. Their little bodies had weight, too, striking my face like tiny kamikazes.

Even my cat Kate was wondering the hell was flying around as she took her ease on the couch in my sunroom. Outside was abuzz.

Inside was abuzz.

What the heck was that?

I am grateful as all get-out that someone invented screens for windows. Otherwise, I would have to flee. 



Don’t Insult the Doc

My dearly beloved has a birthday today. Please don’t tell him about this post.

My orthopedic surgeon flirts with women. When he fixed a tear in my hip two years ago, we saw a lot of each other beforehand, mainly because he had performed my particular surgery only once, on a cadaver. He was eager to have a live patient, and I trusted his hands, but the hospital was not eager to let him have a go at me, him not having actual experience and all. He got the go-ahead about three months after I first saw him, after he went down to L.A. to watch the surgery performed by its master craftsman and studied several of the surgeries online.

The morning of my ground-breaking hip surgery, he paid me a visit in the pre-op area. I had a visitor sitting with me, a beautiful Amazon of a woman from my AA fellowship. He flirted with her outrageously, ignoring me totally, for a very long time. They looked like Jack Sprat who could eat no fat and his wife who could eat no lean (just saying, not because I was jealous, even though I, really, was his ticket to a new lucrative specialty, and I was his FIRST, after all, but I am short and she is tall, and for Pete’s sake! she towered over him, being as he is a little guy, but he probably didn’t know that since she never actually stood up so he could see she was inappropriately tall). [gasp!]

So. Anyway, the orthopedist is a flirt. A shameless one. And usually he flirts with me, but not, apparently, when I’m accompanied by tall, good-looking women. This has happened to me all my life, or at least three times. My theory is that short women are invisible to men when accompanied by tall, good-looking women. It’s one of the crosses we little ladies must bear.

The upshot of all this is that I didn’t invite my tall friend to sit with me in pre-op last week for my hand surgery. I didn’t even tell her about it. So when Doc Do-Little visited me in pre-op, he flirted with me somewhat briskly, wrote YES on my right wrist in permanent marker, and vanished for an hour.

When next I saw him, it was in operating room #4, and I was supposed to be knocked out by an IV drug, but I wasn’t, and not only that, but he was running two HOURS late. So while he did harsh things to my carpal tunnel, which had been numbed, thank God, I yakked with him and the anesthesiologist. He, the outrageous flirt, let fly with an innuendo in answer to an innocent question of mine.

I might have been a little crabby about everything. When he said what he said, I said something back that wasn’t terribly innocent. And because the stupid drug wasn’t working on my sober alcoholic/addict brain, I remembered everything, so I wrote this poem a couple of days ago. I’m toying with the idea of giving it to him on Monday when he takes off my bandages.

Don’t Insult the Doc

Are you done yet? I asked the surgeon
who was cutting up my hand
(I was supposed to be unconscious
and adrift in lotus land).
That is not a pleasant question,
he said with some hauteur;
it could emasculate a man
if he were insecure.
I said I know of an inquiry
that is surely more adverse:
Asking a man, Is it in me yet?
must be infinitely worse.
Oh, good God! cried the orthopedist,
with a vivid reprimand ~
and thus I learned to never insult
a scalpel-wielding man.

This Is Me on Steroids

The treatment for my pneumonia requires that I take steroids along with antibiotics and inhalers. I seem to have a lot of energy, and I am in a really good mood. Here’s what I do on steroids:

Write a 2,500-word brief for a law professor that a) details the civil-rights violations of hospitalized Alzheimer victims, and b) advocates enforcement of state and federal self-determination laws by imposing punitive measures against medical facilities for violations. Compile copies of the pertinent regulations, rejoice that the guy is interested, and send the package off.

Indulge in an act of shoe repair to mend my favorite slippers.

Cross-examine an old friend, via email, who has retired to a sailboat in Mexico and fallen in love. Quiz him at length about her, the circumstances, and the emotional/philosophical conditions of falling in love with a stranger.

Make yet another attempt to concentrate on my overdue writing assignment about local charity programs during the holiday season.

Wander in the garden with the pruning shears, investigating the whereabouts of two praying mantises that live in the dahlias.

Query the family corporate attorney about the legal interpretation of certain provisions in my parents’ trust, comparing the instructions to the actual intentions of my parents.

Stand in the middle of my sunroom office and whirl my arms in big circles because it feels great.

Have AA meetings on the phone with sober friends. Explore big issues like spirituality in marriage, how to pursue a goal, and the best way to treat a sore throat.

Cope with a bedtime panic attack, afraid I’ll stop breathing in my sleep. Wake my husband to warn him of my impending death and remind him where I keep all our essential papers. Ask him to stay awake and keep me breathing. Forgive him when he chuckles and goes back to sleep.

Make a little autumn bouquet and ride into town with a friend to put it on my mother’s new headstone, taking a photo to send to out-of-town family.

Stay on top of respiratory treatments and medications. Check for improvement with my new lung-exercise toy.

Eat a gloriously crisp Braeburn apple. Then grab a few Cheetos for nutritional balance.

Tackle that overdue writing assignment again. Try to write a lead paragraph. When that fails, take the beagle for a walk. Ponder my upcoming 56th birthday. Laugh at the falling leaves. Thank God for my life.

Not Such a Pretty Face Anymore, Is It?

Once upon a time, not too long ago, either, a nice girl got in trouble. She fooled around with something dangerous, and she got caught. A terrible fate then befell her: bad dreadlocks.

The ancient poet Ovid says she, that is, Medusa, was a pretty serving girl of the big-cheese goddess Athena. Lots of dudes wanted a piece of her action, but she just said no, like she should... until the big-cheese god Poseiden came along, in which case, Medusa was won over, or overcome, we don't know which exactly. Athena got wind of it and turned Medusa into a monster with snakes in place of her beautiful hair and with a face so horrible, people turned into stone at the sight of it.

But my story is different. In keeping with my recent theme of death by addiction, this is what happened to Medusa: She was a nice girl who got hooked on opium. Everything was fine until her supply ran out. In 55 succinct words, here is her lament:

Oh, nectar of poppy, whose long fingers
squeeze so sweetly, you drift to death, now
Oh, wretched need. Oh, snakes in your head.
No matter how you claw at them, they writhe there,
belonging to you, who let the darkness in.
You plead for release but the price is your head,
and it is squirming.

*************************************************

Not very pretty, is it? In honor of Halloween, please check out other souls who played with 55 words here. Thank you, Mr. Knowitall.

Painting, "Medusa" by Arnold Böcklin, circa 1878

You Want the WHOLE THING Rewritten?!!

The upshot of this weekend's critique of my novel by an agent, publishing editor, and writing instructor is: It's lovely writing, but change everything.

Change the main character.

Change the plot.

Change the opening.

Change the motivations.

Start from SCRATCH!

Yikes!

This morning I'm watching the gray ocean from the balcony of my temporary condo, and I'm laughing.

So essentially I asked these people, What do you think about my book?

And they said, Write a different book.

And I'm thrilled!

Like everyone else who's an ordinary writer, I know when my work needs work and even when I'm happy with something, I sense it could be better. I spent my career editing things.

But sometimes the mechanics of HOW and WHAT elude me. That's what I've got this weekend. The what and the how, from people who sell books and people who read them.

Nobody told me I'd be better off in a different line of work. That's a relief!