Powers by John B. Olson [Early Reviewer]

I love books that publish serially. However, I am very particular about reading them in order. That said, I signed up for Library Thing's Early Reviewer program, and the first book I received was the second in a series. [POWERS] by [[John B. Olson]] follows the book [Shade]. While I've not read the latter, the sequel stood alone as an intense and exciting read.

It is the first "Christian" mystery I've found worth my time. It's not that I'm against throwing a few Christian concepts into a book, but too many deteriorate to proselytizing, and then the story line falls. This was well-written, and the theme of good versus evil was laced with shades of grey, with characters that were human and not super human.

I am looking forward to the receipt of the first book, Shade. I expect I will add Olson to my list of  'must have' books.

Happy Reading

Swine Flu

It's running rampant in Ottumwa.  According to news reports, most colleges have had serious outbreaks, and schools in the state are running close to epidemic numbers of kids out [overall average isn't there yet, but several counties are above the cutoff].

Use common sense. Cough into your elbow [not your hand]. Wash hands frequently and keep them away from your face. Rinse your nose and throat with saline solution - or you can use listerine for throat. Flu is spread through throat and nasal passages, so if you rinse often [even if you were exposed], it won't have time to proliferate and cause the disease.

If you do get the flu, stay away from others. Wear a paper mask if you must be around others, or even a bandanna over your nose and mouth.

And if you get complications - trouble breathing, high fever that doesn't go away - then see your doctor. Do tell the staff when you get there that you think you have the flu; they should have a separate area to sit you down in, so you're not infecting others.

Stay safe, stay well.

Dignity and lack thereof

My son likes to watch Jerry Springer. Although we're white, he watches BET a lot. He watches Steve Wilkos, Cops, and other similar shows. This bothers me a lot.

These shows all have the same things in common. People on them behave in socially inappropriate ways, in fact, in ways that are obnoxious, lack common sense and generally would be offensive in real life.  It grates on my soul to see/listen to these kinds of shows.

What it boils down to, is a lack of self-respect and dignity. If you don't care for your own image, consider at least that this may affect family and co-workers and friends. The sad thing is, in our society, this appears to be the norm.

Oddly, at least in the case of BET, if a white network showed such stereotypes of blacks in their shows, a huge hue and cry would go up and accusations of racism would be rampant. How can people so destroy their own kind? 

But what I'm really upset with is that my son finds this stuff amusing and entertaining. Did I go wrong somewhere?

Awards

I'm proud of Obama and feel he did deserve the Nobel, though there are others as deserving.

http://www.freetheslaves.net/Page.aspx?pid=504

Scary

A week ago, my mother died. It was not a shock, as she'd been sick a long time. After a certain age, even though it's not unexpected, it is still hard to come to terms with that.

Thursday, a friend/coworker, only 10 days away from her retirement, had a brain aneurysm at home. Thanks to a quick-acting spouse and very good emergency care, she's now recuperating in the neuro icu at the medical center where she was sent.

Last night, another coworker didn't make it to work - her husband had been life-flighted to the same neuro unit with a subdural hemorrhage. That one's very close to my age.

So I am thinking about death. No one is ever truly ready for it, and I think, despite whether someone is there or not, that death is personal and not a thing to be shared. I believe that when people say they are glad they could be with the dying as they departed, that they want to believe their presence made it easier to die. I think it's like funerals - it's a ritual for the living who don't want to accept the finality of death, that ultimate detachment from this world and the people in it. 

So when I die, when I'm dead and gone, whatever good I've done in the world is all that's left. That and a few ashes.

Goodbye Mama

My mother just passed away. I hadn't spoken directly to her in probably 15 years, though occasional mails passed or flowers were sent when my sisters let me know she was ill.

Our relationship was not the usual, I think. She didn't want me. In fact, in my 30s, after some counseling, I realized she never really liked me. I mentioned that to a dear friend, who lived across from us growing up. Her response: "We knew that. We all knew she hated you, that's why we had you over as often as we could."

Oblivious to that, with the love and devotion only a child could have, I tried for many years to be what pleased my mother. Some brief memories show what I was up against.


"Can I join Brownies?" "No, we can't afford it." [Old sib did campfire, younger did boy scouts.]
"Will you teach me to crochet?"  "No, you're too stupid."
"Here's my report card, all A's." "It's so easy for you. Your sister's B's mean more because she works so much harder for them."
"I'm engaged." "Thank God! I thought you'd be an old maid forever."

Mom was unhappy in her marriage. When I was two, she left dad, taking me and my half-sister. She left sis with her father's mother, and me with her own mother, then went to a city 5 hours away to live with her brother and wait tables in a soda shop. Dad got me back, told her if she wanted to see me again, she'd get home. She did, after several months.

After that, I always heard, "We stayed together for the sake of the children." Rather lame as they had two more after me.

So.. Mom is gone and I'm trying to think in what way to honor her.

1. You gave me birth. Thank you for that, because I like my life. [I'll ignore the fact that you blamed the birth for a reduction in breast size.]
2. From an early age, you taught me independence. I learned to keep to myself, to enterain myself. [Never mess with #1 child cause you lose, and don't disturb mother.]
3. You taught me a love of reading. [You were always reading, from morning to night.]
4. You taught me to accept that life won't always be fair. [Despite hating me, you often tried to be fair.]
5. You taught me that a person should value what others give them.
6. You taught me that there are no guarantees in life.
7. You taught me courage in the face of fears.
8.  You taught me that nothing is as precious as a Mother's love.

For all you taught me, Mother, thank you. For all the pain, for all the grief, for all the joy and the sweetness of life, I thank you. While this missive is bitter at times, and sweet at others, I know that no matter what I can do, I can never repay you for the months that you carried me in your body, sharing your life with me.

Thank you, Mama, and may your true beliefs grant you a spot in paradise.

FMS & Games

After several of us posted on the World of Warcraft yahoo group, it turns out there are enough of us playing who have FMS to form our own group. That's not really surprising. I'm probably one of the more physically active FMS'ers in the group, since I work full time. 

I've been fortunate, in that I've been able to turn the FMS to what works for me, and actually made upward progress against the disease. Fibromyalgia is debilitating for many, but from the diagnosis in 1992, to now, I've basically become more active, more able to do things. Part of that is due to the fact that I can't take any of the medications, so I have to deal with the pain in other ways. Part of it is that I just don't want to go down without a fight. 

There are days the boys tease me about a scooter, but overall, compared to my abilities 6 years ago, I'm still making progress at getting better. I have found that working my ideal hours does help - I'm doing two 8-5s this week and it's kicking my butt bad.

But as for my fellow gamers, not all are so lucky. Hopefully our ability to communicate will give us all the hope and incentive we need to fight past the pain to a better tomorrow.

WoW - my wind-down time

I'm an avid player of the game World of Warcraft. I'm not a very sociable person, learned at an early age that I had little patience with self-made drama queens.  So I play WoW, have since the open beta.  I'm not the best at it, but I'm getting better.

Mostly I play on the horde side - moved one of my idle toons there just today. She's an undead warlock - which reminds me of Ozzy and the Blizzcon. Really enjoyed that, probably almost as much as I would have enjoyed in person. Zak says he'll go with me next time.. so I'm going to have to save up for that.

Meanwhile, my main, who started out to be my alt, has been 80 for a month, and there's still so much to do. Compared to other games, where you play a while and beat the game, this one never runs out of options - and if you think it has, you can start over, in a different toon, change factions, become something you weren't before. It doesn't grow stale.

So basically, I pay for an internet connection, which I'd have anyway, and about $13 a month. That's for hours of fun, and no other costs. I talk to real people in here and it's no problem, and I don't have to worry about going out, getting overtired or spending too much on entertainment.

Call me an addict, but it's sure cheaper than weekly bowling, Friday nights at Courtside or anything else along those lines. So, for anyone who has issues with my gaming... phhhbbbt!

Fairy Tales Can Come True

So fairy tales can come true, kinda, sorta. Hadda share this one with my co-workers.

I don't sleep well, not uncommon as we get older. So Saturday night, I turned in kinda early, about 0230.  Woke up at 730 am in major pain, felt like I'd wrenched my back really bad. Got up, did the old woman thing... puttered around, went to the bathroom, wandered into the kitchen and watered the plants, got some water for myself, and finally worked out enough kinks I thought I could sleep again.  

Pulled back the blanket, and there in the dark, right in the middle of my bed - where I sleep, was a teeny tiny, white pea-sized rock. /snicker  

Yep, I'm da princess. I set the rock on the dresser nearby and curled up into the bed and slept just fine after that, no aches or pains when I woke. 

Nope, I didn't check for bruises.. but I did get some major guffaws sharing this with my friends.

A Toddler's Fear

I've always been fascinated by words, by the way our lives revolve around the ability to use and redefine the words that we live in, through, and by. Our earliest memories are often pre-verbal. How then do we store them? Is it by the emotions, the feelings they evoke? Are those memories accurate? What about the earliest dreams we recall?

There is a recurring nightmare I had, from as far back as I could remember. It made no sense to me for many years. I was with my father, in a car. We were on a trip, and ate at a drive-in. This was in the mid-1950s, when I was about 2 years or so. I know it is based in reality, because family spoke of Dad taking me, in my words, 'on a pica-nic in 'tucky' - yes, Kentucky. The dream was nice at first, root beer, hot dogs, but then it changed, and there was a small grey stone building - a roadhouse of some sort? - and a man angry at Dad, and words exchanged. Some were about him bringing me. The dream deteriorated into a sort of pirate-y sword duel and I always woke screaming cause Dad killed the angry man.

I was still having this dream when I was 18-19. It wasn't until I was in my mid-twenties that I learned more of this. I learned mom left dad, she took me and my 1/2 sis to her mom in Kentucky. She left us there and went to Indiana where her brother and his family lived, and took a job at a drugstore soda fountain.

Dad was never one to lose an argument. He took his first weekend free and drove to Gramma's. There he took me, leaving my sister with her father's mother and in school, and told Gran that he'd 'work it out' with Mom. Well, that he did, sort of. He took me back to his place, shared with his sister and her husband and daughter, and told Mom, "You'll get your butt back here if you ever want to see your daughter." She did... after several months.

But.. what I wonder.. is just how much of that drive was real, that I dreamed of, and semi-recalled.. and how much of it was exaggerated by my fear of Dad's anger. He was always an angry man.. and I was a timid thing back then. How much can a child truly recall?

Mom says I used to pick cacti from her flower pots and bring them to her when they bloomed. I can almost remember that, but then, is it merely the power of suggestion? I was barely 1-2 then. And yet, I had a clear and distinct fear of touching electrical outlets for as long as I remembered which continues to this day - and she did tell of me putting a fork in an outlet.

If these memories are only fantasies, or dreams, or nightmares, but they have a real affect on the rememberer, are they as valid as the 'truer' memories that others had?