Grey's Anatomy

If you're one of the apparently endless fans of this series, you probably think I'm here to praise it. Well, you're wrong. Though I've tried to sit through a couple of episodes, it felt way too much like punishment rather than pleasure, so I gave up on that. I'd rather watch a test pattern.

The thing about the show that strikes me, though, is the rabidness of its fans. I can't count the number of times one of them has askd me, "Do you watch 'Grey's Anatomy'?"

"No," I say. "Tried it. Didn't like it."

Do they express surprise? Occasionally. Do they change the subject? Rarely. But usually they go on with some version of, "You should have it last night. So-and-so did such-and-such to this person, and that person did blah blah blah, and then yada-yada-yada . . ."

Which part of "No" don't they get? No, I don't watch the show. No, I don't know who these characters are. No, I don't care who did what to whom and why. No, I don't want to hear a recap of the last episode (or, worse, the last season).

No other show that I can think of has this effect on my friends -- and it's not just my friends. My oldest sister has the same complaint. Do these people just love the show so much that they're compelled to share? Do they find it incomprehensible that the rest of us don't love it just as much? Or have they just been lobotomized by the show? (Don't laugh. I think it could happen. Like I said, I tried it and found it amazingly uninteresting. A few hours or, God forbid, a season of it just might make me wish my frontal lobe was missing.)

"Grey's Anatomy" might be just the thing to make millions of you feel better. YOU watch it at bedtime. But bring it up to me the next day at your own risk. Rachel10:21 AM

The nerve of some people

Someone called me narrow-minded the other day. Not to my face, mind you. I'd've smacked her if she had.

My first impulse was to . . . well, smack her. My second was to laugh. (Though you probably guessed that I'm still annoyed about it or I wouldn't be talking about it now.) Truth is, her comment just demonstrated how little she knows about me. Anyone who KNOWS me knows that's about as far from the truth as you can get. In fact, some family members think I'm so OPEN-minded that I'm going to burn in hell.

I have my prejudices, sure -- anyone who says they don't is a liar. I don't have much tolerance for liars. I can't bear stupid behavior. (Stupid people are different -- they can't HELP being stupid, so blaming them for it is pointless.) I hate condescension. When life was sucky last year, we dealt with a whole bunch of medical types, and without fail, every one of the MDs but one was condescending as hell. As Dr. Phil says, do I have "stupid" written on my forehead? I don't hate arrogance, but you need to have a damn good reason for it.

But "narrow-minded" isn't a word that anyone has ever applied to me. In this instance, what it really meant was I don't think/act/feel/believe as she does. I've got news for her: that's not narrow-mindedness. It's individuality. There aren't too many people just like me out there in the world -- what a scary thought! I'm with me twenty-four hours a day; I like a little variety in life. Okay, a LOT of variety. Different races, different religions, different backgrounds, different beliefs -- it makes life more interesting. Apparently, this person just wants little bobbleheads in her own image surrounding her.

Jeez, now THAT'S a scary thought. Rachel11:31 AM

Damn spam!

A year or so ago, my ISP went out of business and we had to change to another. Robert set up my account for me, and within sixty seconds of his creating the account, I had spam waiting in my inbox.

Now I get have a variety of addresses, and each one gets a varying amount of spam. I rarely ever get the ones advertising porn sites. Most of mine are for one of three things: stocks for sell, increasing the size of your penis, or for prescription meds.

Puh-leeze . . . okay, you've got some money saved and you want to invest in the stock market. How do you choose which stocks to buy? Do you talk to your friends who are already invested? Read the financial section of the newspaper? Educate yourself? Find a good stockbroker and go from there? Of course not -- you're going to invest your hard-earned money in stock recommended by a total stranger in a nuisance email that clutters your inbox. Yeah, sure.

Ditto on the meds. I have no problem with buying on the Internet, but from an unsolicited email? What kind of moron does that?

As for the penis thing, I just deleted one that promised to triple the size of mine. Any drug/treatment that could do that would be a miracle drug, indeed, considering that I don't have one.

I think all spammers should be hung by their thumbs -- naked -- in the middle of the Antarctic winter. At least until they change their ways. Rachel10:10 AM

Here we go again

I can't fully explain how utterly disgusted I've been by the recent talk of presidential campaigns. First Obama, then Clinton, then some Kansas guy. Sheesh, the election is nearly two years away! Are we going to have to put up with this crap the whole time?

If I ran the world, political campaigns would last one month. Candidates would be prohibited from doing any advertising, speeches, interviews or campaigning until four weeks before the election. Just think of the benefits -- those who are already holding public office wouldn't have that excuse to be off on the road instead of doing the job they're getting paid for. The cost of buying the office -- er, running for the office -- would be drastically cut. There would be no primaries, no party conventions. Best of all, we the people wouldn't be driven bonkers for months at a time.

It was no surprise that Clinton's interested. What did surprise me was that she started out her run with a lie, saying that she was "exploring" the possibility of running, and then saying she's in it, and she's in it to win. Excuse me? Is she defining "it" as an exploration of the possibility? Wouldn't surprise me. After all, her husband had some creative definitions, too.

To paraphrase a comment I overheard in a restaurant, I wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton for dog catcher if I was running down the street with a pack of wild dogs on my heels. I think a woman could do a great job running the country. Just not that woman.

In our last state elections, I'm sad to say, some of my decisions came down to who pissed me off the least. I don't vote for people who blatantly lie, no matter how likeable they might be. One guy who got caught in his lies and outed by the media still won his race. I was, and still am, puzzled by it. When a man's been proven dishonest and untrustworthy, how can you entrust a public office to him?

I was watching one of my favorite movies the other day -- "Men in Black." Will Smith says something along the lines of "People are smart," and Tommy Lee Jones replies, "No, a person is smart. People aren't." Amen to that! Rachel9:59 AM

I hate Oklahoma in the winter

I'm singing that line -- badly -- to the tune of "I Love Paris in the Springtime."

I love Oklahoma, truly I do. But these past five and a half days of frigid temperatures, freezing rain, solid ice and going nowhere/doing nothing are five days' too much. We live on top of a hill with a fabulous view -- you should see the sunset reflected in the glass of twenty-some-miles-distant downtown Tulsa -- but it's a bitch when it's icy. My truck has four-wheel-drive, and it's never failed us yet, but it's unnerving as hell to go down the hill in a 6,000-pound vehicle that's sliding out of control. Our deal is Robert steers and I pray until we hit the paved road a mile away.

Unlike waaay too many people, I don't drive on this. When the highway patrol says, "Stay home," I stay. I haven't driven on snow or ice in twenty-some years. To be fair, we did live away from Oklahoma for sixteen of those years, in Southern California, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. Not a whole lot of snow that I can recall -- maybe 3-4 days in sixteen years. I like control, and when I have zero control over either my vehicle or the idiots on the road, I freak. It's not a pretty sight.

Of course, when I'm stuck at home for days at a time, I have a tendency to freak, too, if I don't keep myself busy. Kind of a lose-lose situation, huh? Rachel12:12 PM

Making my day

Yesterday I took a break from work to have lunch just as the Jerry Springer Show was coming on, and not by coincidence. (Yep, I admit -- I'm a Jerry junkie. Go ahead and sneer. Everyone who finds that out about me finds it totally bizarre. But, hey, it's entertaining -- and have you seen Steve? And Tony?? Enough said.)

Anyway, I flipped on the show yesterday, and there was Tony in his boxers and nothing else (well, maybe shoes and socks, but come on, who really bothered to look?). My, oh, my. Every woman should see something that good at least once every day.

I can't remember Tony's last name, but I think he's Italian -- like Tony Ceola. He's definitely handsome -- like my Tony -- and sexy -- like my Tony. I wonder if he does any acting . . . . Rachel9:49 PM

Rachel's score: 2

M - I - C
Won't see you next week.

K - E - Y
Why? Because I killed you.

M - O - U - S - E

I got two of the nasty little mouse critters that have been dropping poo around my kitchen. Of course, once I discovered their lifeless little bodies, then I had to dispose of them. Yuck! My mother wouldn't hesitate to grab the stiff pieces of fur and toss 'em, but I'm a tad finicky about things that come into contact with my skin. I had to dig up the tongs that got too rusty for use in the kitchen and very carefully lift it out, mouse and trap, and gingerly dropped it into the trash. Hey, no laughing! At least I didn't get the industrial strength rubber gloves and a mask!

After disposal was accomplished, I had to santize the kitchen again -- sheesh, twice in six months. Just the thought puts me in the mood for chocolate. (Drat -- and all I have in the house is peanut brittle.)

This had better be the last of the buggers for this winter. I'd hate to have to get nasty with them. Rachel4:13 PM

I should have stayed in bed

It's been one of those weeks -- too little time to work, too much of other stuff to do. Some moron hit my mother's car in the WalMart parking lot (and I was the one who'd driven it there). I took her to a doctor's appointment and the doc was running about 40 minutes behind. She was having trouble navigating post-surgery/surgery/surgery, but there were no wheelchairs to be found. Robert and I went to dinner with the kiddo so I could give him some papers -- and left the papers at home. We made arrangements to meet today (he and his bride are leaving town today) and it turned out I'd printed the wrong stuff. Crap.

So it was just adding insult to injury that every blasted radio station I turned on was playing the Beatles. I hate the Beatles. Hate hate hate 'em. In my never-very-humble opinion, they did only one song worth listening to, and it's rarely played on the radio. (I don't even know the name of it -- something about "Every day she takes a morning bath . . .")

I was a wee one when the Beatles became rich and famous, but I've never understood their appeal. I'd rather listen to NPR than them -- and trust me, that's saying a lot. It wouldn't be so bad if every single classic rock station in the world didn't feel obligated to play at least one Beatles song every hour. The other day, I was flipping through stations and, honest to God, two stations in a row were playing "Band on the Run." *I* wanted to run -- screaming from the radio -- kinda tough when you're in a car. One of the stations in Tulsa even has a weekly hour of nothing but the Beatles. They couldn't pay enough to make me tune in.

When I'm in my truck, it's no big deal -- I blast TransSiberian Orchestra on the CD player the whole time. But lately I've been using my mother's car which doesn't have a CD player, so I've got the Beatles coming out of my ears (which is way better than going into my ears).

It's not the first time I've hated something so many other people love. I'd rather have my teeth drilled than watch "Seinfeld." I never loved Lucy or Ray Romano. I always thought "rap music" was an oxymoron. Soap operas suck pond water. And reality TV shows -- with the exception of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" -- well, I won't get started on that.

Suffice it to say that somedays it doesn't pay to get out of bed. Rachel11:25 AM

Survival of the Smartest

We live in the country, right? And among all the little and not-so-little critters living out here along with us are mice. I hate mice. Wouldn't want to feed them to snakes (I hate snakes, too), but I hate 'em. A whole lot. So of course when the weather turns cold, one or more of them tries to move into the house with us. We've tried keeping cats, but they always run off first chance they get. (Could it be the numerous large cat-hating dogs who live here that send them scurrying?)

A few days ago I woke up with an abnormal excess of energy and decided to clean my kitchen -- really clean it, like I haven't done in too many months to remember. I spent hours in there -- which is really ridiculous, considering that it's just a normal size kitchen -- and when I was done, it sparkled.

The next morning I fell out of bed and staggered into the kitchen, looking for chocolate and expecting to be dazzled by the totally clean room, and what did I find? Mouse poop trailed all the way across one countertop.

You see, that's one of the things I hate about mice. They're filthy. Even the coyotes and the deer that use my yard for a bathroom leave neat little piles. They don't scatter it all over creation. But mice . . . it's like they're regular pooping machines. They just toddle long, depositing a drop here, a drop there, a drop everywhere.

Naturally, I dug out the mouse traps and figured out how to set them. (That's always been Robert's job, but he wasn't home, and Mickey and I were.) I dabbed them with peanut butter -- we give them the good stuff before killing them -- and set them along the counter and went about my day, waiting to hear that satisfying crack! that signaled success.

Nothing happened during the day, but then, mice -- at least, most of ours -- are nocturnal. I went to bed that night satisfied that I would awaken to find at least one little body dead in the throes of peanut butter orgasm.

Did I? Of course not. What I found was trails of mouse poop weaving in and around four traps, all still set, all licked clean of peanut butter with surgical precision. What the hell? I reset the traps, again with the Jif, and woke up the next morning to the same situation.

Today I'm setting them again -- with Jif anchoring a nugget of Dog Chow. Much to our dogs' dismay, our little country mice have a fondness for their chow. If this doesn't work, I'm thinking I'll use those sticky, gluey pads all over my counter. Anyone who comes within spitting distance will be in danger of glue overdose, but it will be worth it.

I really hate mice. Rachel9:30 AM

New info on SCORCHED

My editor just sent me the cover for SCORCHED -- hate the title, like the cover a lot. It's all orangeish/reddish/black and shows Selena with a gun and a smaller picture of her and Tony running for their lives. Seems like that's all they ever do, isn't it? Hey, someone's life has to be more exciting than mine.

I got the cover copy, too, and have to look over it for accuracy before sending it back. Once I do that, I'll post both cover and copy here or have Diva Mary put it on the homepage. I'll put up an excerpt, too.

I haven't asked whether the release date's been changed, but will put it here when I find out. I'm just up to my plucked eyebrows in revisions -- 8 days, including today, to finish them! And then I'll be thinking about the next book. What other kinds of danger can I put Selena and Tony in? I'm thinking Rodrigo, Selena's evil stepfather, needs to put in an appearance, and ever since one reader suggested that Selena should get pregnant, I've been considering it. Wouldn't that be fun to watch?

It's cold here this morning -- though anything below 70 is cold to me. I've finished my morning walk, eaten my granola-bar breakfast, and am about ready to work. Wish I could have taken that walk on a warm, sunny beach somewhere, but no chance of that. After the last sucky months of my life, who has time to vacation??? Rachel9:53 AM

Feliz Navidad

Oops, I'm a bit too late for that, huh?

I can't believe it's been nearly five months since I posted here. What can I say besides life has sucked?

But that was then. It's a new year, with new opportunities, new chances, new goals to pursue . . . and a brand-new calendar to fill in with deadlines, conferences, fabulous vacations . . . I wish!

Hitting the highlights of the past months -- my birthday was cool! Spent it at a B&B with ten or twelve great friends, including my three twisted sisters, and had a ball.

Just a day or so later, the kiddo returned to the U.S. from Italy. He's going to an Army school, then he's got orders to a stateside post -- and he and his lovely bride will get to live together for the first time. Cool!

Hmm. Can't think of any other highlights. On to the lowlights . . .

Halloween sucked, not that we really observe it anymore since the kiddo's long since outgrown it. Okay, so I do buy bags and bags of Halloween candy, and I don't even try to pretend it's for trick-or-treaters. We live so far out in the country that the only people who come knocking on our door at night are lost or stupid.

Thanksgiving sucked. Family crisis, no family dinner. Christmas sucked. Ongoing family crisis, no shopping, no tree, no TransSiberian Orchestra CDs blasting on the stereo while I made cookies, candy, and rum cakes. No rum cakes, either. We did get a family dinner, though -- one of my b-i-l's saw to that.

New Year's Eve wasn't bad. Robert and I aren't into partying, but we went to the kiddo's for dinner. Good food, good company, and home in plenty of time to get tucked before the parties started.

The writing front has sucked, too. (I'm just full of giggles today, aren't I?) I'm working on the revisions for the next Selena book, SCORCHED. It's due out later this year -- maybe in July, maybe after that. All the suckiness in my life pushed me way past deadline on it, so I don't know whether it's been moved in the schedule or not. I love Tony and Selena and most of the other characters, but I have to say, I'll be happy to write The End on this one. Not literally, of course, but I'll be signing off on it in a big way in my mind.

But it's a new year!! Things will be better, or Baby New Year and Father Time are both getting their asses kicked!

Have a good one! Rachel10:11 AM