Just call me "Donkey"

Do you remember the scene in SHREK where Donkey gets sprinkled with fairy dust and raises up into the air? "I can fly!" he shouts, and the people watching from the ground add, "He can fly, he can fly!"

Well, I picked up my uber-cool glasses the other day, put them on, took a look around and shouted, "I can see!"

Okay, I didn't really shout. Except inside my head. But it was like the world had suddenly come into focus. I knew my vision had gotten worse in the past couple years, but I hadn't realized exactly how much worse. I can see clearly now. (Sounds like an old song, doesn't it? Sheesh, I'm just ripe for ripping off others.)

And the glasses are -- to add ripping off sister Leah to the mix -- too cha-cha for words. The frames are Valentino, and they are way too cool. Mom said they look really good with the current hair color (which she hates). I can't tell you the name of it because I've forgotten, but it's what Intense Red Copper should look like but never did, at least, on me. Next time up I'll be a subdued dark auburn, I think.

It's two weeks today since the hellhound run-in. You never know how much you rely on an elbow until you can't anymore. I mean, it's an elbow, for God's sake. A funny-looking bend so your hand can reach your mouth or the back of your head. There's a whole lot you can't do without a fully-functioning one, as I've found out these past fourteen days. For what it's worth, it makes me more sympathetic to the kiddo, who broke his when he was fifteen and had to have two surgeries and titanium screws and mega pain pills.

I'm faithfully following the baby doc's orders (honest to God, he looks too young to shave) and doing the streteches and all, but I still reach a point most every afternoon where all I can do is lie down and let the whole arm rest. Not that I'm averse to a nap most days. I just prefer them when the slightest movement doesn't make my arm go yow!!

Ah, well, this, too, shall pass. And in the meantime, I've got the cool new cha-cha glasses so I can see what I've been missing! Rachel10:47 AM

It looks just like me!

I've been meaning to get a picture for a long time, but never got around to it. Amazing what you can do while recuperating from a broken elbow, huh?

It's been a week and a day since the doggie run-in, and as long as I don't move my arm very much, I'm okay. The joint's stiff, so I have to do stretches three or four times a day. I know they're getting easier, but it doesn't seem like it when I'm actually doing it. I tend to swear a lot.

Like that's anything new? Rachel4:25 PM

Rachel4:22 PM

I knew it would come to this someday

Okay, so last Thursday I'm walking through the living room, paying no mind to the dogs, when wham! Our seventy-pound puppy slammed into the back of my legs. I dropped to my knees -- on concrete -- then hit my palms, then smacked my head. (Did I mention on concrete?) That naughty dog and two others then leap onto me, apparently figuring since I was on their level, I was there to play.

My knees immediately turn yucky shades of black and purple, with a golf-ball size knot on one. My palms hurt. My wrists hurt. My elbows hurt. My ribs hurt. My shoulders hurt. Oddly enough, my head doesn't hurt. Guess when Mom and Dad called me hard-headed, they weren't kidding.

I take some Motrin, ice the elbow that hurts worse, eat some chocolate, go to bed. Wake up the next morning . . . and I am in pain. My knees don't want to bend. My wrists don't want to straighten. My right arm is totally useless, hanging crooked at my side. It takes me twenty minutes to get dressed, ten minutes to brush my teeth, and I give up on my hair. I can't lift either arm high enough to get the brush through. I call my mom, and she comes to take me to the emergency room.

My right arm, hand and fingers are swollen, and the little admissions clerk looks at me and asks, "Can you fill out this form?" (Do you want to be able to read it?) I get through triage, then into a treatment room, where I'm asked to sign more forms. (After watching my painful progress on the first two, the guy says, "Initials are fine.") The nurse comes in and pokes, the doctor comes in and pokes, and then the torture begins.

Who knew torture was spelled "x-ray"? Cute little girl, hardly old enough to be out of school and way more concerned with how bad my dog must feel than with how I feel, settles me on a stool, positions my shoulder and says, "Hold your right arm straight out from your side with your palm up." Ha! If I could move my right arm, I wouldn't be there.

She chats, lifts and rotates my arm a bit, chats more, lifts and rotates a bit more, and so on until she finally has me where she wants me. I'm sweating bullets, getting sick at my stomach and thinking seriously about just passing out, but she gets the views she wants. I'm hugely relieved to still be conscious and thinking about the bed waiting back in my cubicle, and begging for pain meds, when she moves me to the table and says, "Now we'll do the elbow."

Holy shit!

Diagnosis: mild sprains of both wrists. Mild strain and bruising on left elbow. Severe strain of right shoulder. Broken right elbow. One sling and two pain pills later, I'm curled up at home in my bed, too exhaused to even whimper.

Best films of a broken elbow he's ever seen, Doc says admiringly. (Cute little x-ray tech almost kills me getting them, but hey, they're great.) Orthopedic surgeon, who doesn't look much older than cute little x-ray tech, says yesterday that if you've gotta break your elbow, that's the best break to get. Get rid of that sling, he advises, and start resuming as much normal activity as possible.

WTF? I'm in pain here. My arm is swollen and bruised. I'm taking regular doses of pain medication (half doses, granted, but still . . .) I can barely dress myself or feed myself, and when the seventy-pound puppy comes running, I cringe and turn to protect my arm. I don't want normal activity -- I want a normal elbow!

And a little extra pampering wouldn't hurt. You know, fluff the pillows, offer chocolate, murmur, "Poor baby."

It's a sad thing when a broken elbow is good for only four days of "Poor baby"-ing. Rachel10:57 AM

Julia Quinn

I admit, I'd never read Julie Q until I started hearing (way back in pre-Internet days -- for me, at least) that she wrote great dialogue. Having loved many an old Cary Grant movie for nothing more than the snappy dialogue (yeah, and if you believe that . . .), I picked up one of her books and loved it. LOVED it. I've been reading her ever since.

But I hadn't picked up her new book yet. (Haven't bought Harry Potter #7 yet either.) Yeah, I'm usually right there, but this time I had some stuff that had to be done that I was having some trouble getting done, so I made myself a deal: no new books until the other stuff was finis.

So last Saturday, after achieving my goals and spending some horrifically hot and sweaty time at my mom's house cutting up branches with my chain saw and burning them, I stopped at Wal-Mart to pick up some groceries. I stunk. I was coated with sweat and soot and ash. My hair was flat as Kansas in places and sticking out maniacally in others. If I'd bothered to put on makeup that day, it would have been long gone.

But, hey, it was Wal-Mart and Saturday night. I didn't stand out that much.

I got all the stuff I needed and swung by the books on the way to the register to pick up HP. But . . . I didn't. I saw the interview on NBC with J.K. Rowling and all the spoilers, and now it's kind of . . . well, spoiled the book for me. I don't want to read it yet. I will. Just not yet.

But I got Julie Q's latest. The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever. At least, I think that's the name.

Oh. My. God. I LOVED that book. Couldn't put it down. Read until my eyes were so blurry that I couldn't make out the words. Great dialogue, and then some. This woman can write.

And she's so darn nice, too. She came to Oklahoma about a year and a half ago to do an all-day workshop for our writers group. Leah and Robert and I picked her up at the airport, had dinner with her, chauffeured her the next day and back to the airport on Sunday, and she was an absolute doll.

Smart, funny, incredibly talented, and so nice you can't even hate her for any of the rest of it.

I can't wait for her next book. Rachel5:16 PM

Good for a Laugh

Okay, so I'm driving down the street and come to a stop light. I'm tapping my fingers impatiently on the steering wheel -- I've got places to go and things to do -- and my bored gaze finally alights on the rear window of the pickup in front of me. It's got a huge sticker that practically fills the window that reads:

Bad-ass boys
(pickup manufacturer's name here)
Have bad-ass toys.

(Or something to that effect.)

And it's on a teeny-tiny Nissan pickup.

Give me a freakin' break. When was the last time anyone ever included "bad-ass" and "Nissan" in the same sentence??? And it was a lil' baby pickup. I can't even call it a "truck" with a straight face. All my neighbors' trucks up here on the hill could carry that tiny thang in the bed with room leftover . . . that is, if they didn't just drive over the top of it and flatten it because it's no bigger than a speck on the road anyway.

By the way, I'm pretty sure that if you call yourself "bad-ass," it freakin' ain't true.

And totally off-topic, happy birthday, Kadon! Though if there's even a remote chance that you're reading this blog, stop it right now. You're much too young.






Rachel9:35 AM

Duh!!!

I can't believe I posted yesterday and forgot to say . . .

Scorched is out!! Woohoo!!


Of course, I haven't seen it on a bookstore shelf yet, but I haven't been anywhere in the past few days but the post office. But be intrepid. Get thee in comfy shoes and go hunting. Track it down, buy a copy or two, then settle in for a good time.

Then be kind to your author (not just me, but all of them whose books you enjoy): tell everyone about it. Pester your family and friends to buy their own copy to read. Go to Amazon and B&N online and post a brief review. You don't have to detail the plot. Even if you just say, "I loved it!", you'll make your author very, very happy. We're simple people. We don't ask for much.


Just think -- ten, fifteen minutes posting on Amazon, you could brighten four or five authors' days. What else you gonna do with that time? And you can even eat chocolate while doing it.





Rachel8:02 AM

Yowza

I've been judging contest entries lately. I don't know quite how it happened -- coordinators would go online, saying "we need judges," and some little devil would automatically hit "reply to," and say, "I'd love to!"

And here I am with a whole slew of stuff to read, score and comment on. Whoa.

What amazes me is that I'm seeing stuff here that, honest to God, does not belong in an unpublished contest. Seriously, some of this is way more than good enough to be published. I'm on my second time through one entry -- I read once just to get a feel, then go back a day or two later, read again and score -- and I keep thinking wtf, why isn't this published??? I know most people enter contests to get legitimate feedback that can help them sell the book, so they don't want to hear, "Wow, I love this!" over and over. But this particular story is so good that I can't think of much that could improve it. I just want to zip it off to my agent and beg her to find a home for it so I can read the whole book. No shit, it's that good.

Obviously, every judge in the world likes to get entries they love, but the ones that need work are easier for me. Sometimes I have a whole slew of problems to pick from; I can offer a lot of advice. Then it's just a matter of of choosing the biggest of the shortcomings and make extra sure that I'm not discouraging. Publishing is a tough business. There are agents, editors, reviewers and readers just waiting to dump on you; you don't need it from a contest judge, too.

(Don't know that I always succeed at that. My measure is would I be offended/hurt/angry if someone said this to me? If the answer's no, then I go ahead and say it. But I've got a thick skin -- courtesy of this business and age. What rolls off me might be tougher to swallow for a more sensitive soul.)

Anyway, I'm totally convinced that one day before long, this one entry I'm judging now will be published, and then I'll be the first to post it here: you've got to get this book! Rachel7:10 PM