2009 October « A See of Green

Archive for October, 2009

24 Bones by Michael F. Stewart

October 30, 2009 · Filed under books, Daily Updates · Tagged Amazon, book review, E-book, Egypt, kindle

Another LibraryThing score! I received 24 Bones as an eBook from the author as a Member Giveaway, with a request for a review.

I did not think receiving this novel as an eBook would pose a problem for me. I love my Kindle and read 98% of my books on it now. And the author sent the novel in several electronic formats. The issue was not with the author, or the delivery of the eBook. The problem arose in the fact that I have not experimented with uploading my own content to my Kindle yet. I have had plenty to read for free or cheap directly from Amazon to have a need at this point. That left me reading it on my PC. Lucky for me, it was a fast paced story and a quick read.

I read the entire novel on a Sunday afternoon.

24 Bones is the story of two rival religions and their clash with each other and with Christianity. The two main characters, Tagg and Sam, are on opposite side in the fight between good and evil. The novel starts with a failed ritualistic baptism of a child into an Egyptian cult. And the action doesn’t slow down from there to the very last page.

I really enjoyed the story line of this novel. I have always been intrigued by Egyptian history. I’m fascinated by the pyramids. Stewart’s view of the modernizing of these ancient religions was believable to the end.

My problem with this book is the character development. Or lack thereof. By the end of the book I did not feel like I really had a good take on the motivation of either of the main characters. I did not feel their passion. I did not know them as people. The book was relatively short and a very fast read. In each scene, I kept thinking that I wished he would have provided more insight into the characters themselves as well as he had drawn the action.

Overall I give it 3 ½ stars out of 5.

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Thousand Word Thursday

October 29, 2009 · Filed under Daily Updates, Thousand Word Thursday · Tagged Halloween, Jack-o'-lantern, Pumpkin, Thousand Word Thursday

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Short but oh so sweet.

October 28, 2009 · Filed under Daily Updates · Tagged kids, Parenting, Princess Girl, Surgery

: Image by papalars via Flickr

Princess Girl’s surgery is over. It went very smoothly. She was out of surgery and in the recovery room in half an hour. Two hours later we were home. The surgeon said it was exactly the same as the left leg with the calf muscle elongated over the ankle bone.

My Mom Nerves can go back into hiding until the next crisis. I am so thankful she has come through both of the surgeries this year like a champ.

Now we start the road to recovery, again.

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Great Expectations

October 26, 2009 · Filed under Daily Updates, writing · Tagged Kids and Teens, NaNoWriMo, Physical exercise, writing

Starting Tuesday the activity level in our house will decrease dramatically. Princess Girl will be on bed rest for a week after her surgery. If all goes as it did with the surgery on her left ankle, she will be non-weight bearing for an additional two weeks. Then she will go into a walking boot.

This means no cheerleading. This means no basketball. No after school practices. No out of town games. I am not sure how we will fill our time without wanting to kill each other. Actually, that is not true. We survived this once. We can easily survive it again.

Princess Girl is already compiling her reading list. And we’ll break out the video games. She is not much of a gamer, but she does enjoy them when she’s on the injured reserve list.

I have high hopes for this activity reprieve. Over the last several months I have fallen off the exercise wagon. I’m hopeful this time at home will give me time to get back into an exercise routine. Although PG says I can’t do it while she is around. She will get jealous. And, with all this extra time in the evenings, I think I have decided to participate in NaNoWriMo again.

I have successfully participated in NaNoWriMo twice. And enjoyed every minute of it. With a full time job and a full time kid, though, it is hard to squeeze that writing time in. This extra time should work perfectly.

Now I just have to get over that nagging voice in my head telling me it’s hopeless. I don’t have it in me to write 50,000 a third time. There’s no reason to even try. If I could decide on a story or plot line that would help.

Ah, I’ve still got a week.

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How about…..NOW!

October 23, 2009 · Filed under Daily Updates · Tagged kids, Parenting, Princess Girl, Surgery

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After Princess Girl’s surgery this summer revealed a genetic anomaly instead of an injury, we knew it was just a matter of time before the other ankle would have to be repaired. Ever the optimist, I held out hope that the right ankle wouldn’t bother her like the left had. It wasn’t her dominant leg after all. You know what they say about wishes. Yeah, and I don’t have a horse to ride either.

The minute her left leg was completely healed she started having trouble on the right. The tendon started popping. It began hurting during tumbling. The pain increased both in frequency and intensity. It happened so fast. I have come to the conclusion the right ankle has always been bad. She just didn’t realize it because the left was worse.

Princess Girl is an active kid. She’s right in the middle of cheer season. Basketball season is right around the corner. And she’s in high school. With all of this we discussed putting off her surgery as long as possible. She knew she couldn’t make it until summer. Spring Break might be the perfect solution. I agreed with the caveat that if the pain started interfering with her activities we would have to move the surgery up. It’s senseless to put off the surgery for the sake of cheer if she can’t cheer due to the pain. She agreed.

I started a pain log. What were her pain levels each day? Were they getting worse? Were they starting to interfere? Unfortunately, for the last four weeks the answers to these questions were too high, yes and yes. And then came the day, last week, when she told me even doing a simple round-off was giving her sharp stabbing pains. A seven on a scale from one to ten. When I told her we couldn’t wait until spring, there was not one word of protest. That’s when I knew the pain was worse than I thought.

Thursday morning I called the surgeon’s office. I left a message with a nurse. Thursday afternoon the nurse of another doctor called back. After she placed the call and asked for me by name she looked at the chart in front of her. “Oh, you are not a patient of Dr. B.” No, we are not. Huh, they must have put the note in the wrong mailbox. She’d be sure to get it to the correct doctor. Friday afternoon, after hearing nothing from the correct doctor, I called back. “Oh yeah, he took that note with him to the surgery center.” Monday, after hearing nothing back, I called the surgery center. “Oh yeah, I see the note and her chart here, but I have nothing scheduled.” Tuesday I’ve had enough. I call the office again. The poor nurse who grabbed that call. I told her the entire story. Every word. She promised me she would write a new note and have our doctor’s nurse call us back that day.

And she did. She explained they hadn’t called back yet because he was trying to rearrange his schedule. He wanted to get us in sooner than December. December!! That’s six or more weeks away! I thanked her for letting us know what was going on. I appreciated not being left in the dark. She said they’d call when they figured out when they could fit Princess Girl in.

Imagine my surprise Wednesday afternoon when my phone rang and pre-admission services was on the other end of the line. She chatted me up for a minute. Verifying what and who. Then she says, “We’ve got Princess Girl scheduled for Tuesday if that will work for you.”

This Tuesday? Yes, this coming Tuesday. We went from six weeks to six days in just under 24 hours. Do you know how much preparation we have to get done in those six short days? I might not even have time to worry.

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Thousand Word Thursday

October 23, 2009 · Filed under Daily Updates, Thousand Word Thursday · Tagged heisman trophy, Thousand, Thousand Word Thursday

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Soulmates

October 21, 2009 · Filed under Daily Updates · Tagged Class reunion, FaceBook, friends, high school, Kids and Teens, Relationships, Walt Disney Company

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Love everlasting. The person that completes you. Eternal devotion. The Yin to your Yang. No matter how you phrase it, it all boils down to the same thing. This is the person with whom you WILL be spending the rest of your life sharing your deepest hopes, dreams and wishes. There is no way to determine when you will meet the person that makes you feel this way. Some people never will.

Most of the teen years are spent thinking your current love is THE one. At least until five minutes after you’ve dumped them, and started dating the next one. I know in high school I thought I had found true love. A minimum of three times. However, I never envisioned spending the rest of my life with any of them. There was no dream of coming home from college in a few years into the arms of the guy with the six inch Mohawk and more eyeliner than most street walkers wear… What was his name, anyway?

It seems, though, that when it came to choosing friends at that point in my life I hit the jackpot. Whether fate or ka or just dumb luck, my closest girl friends from my teen years were exactly the right fit for me – had I only known it at the time.

This summer I celebrated my 20^th class reunion. It was incredibly fun to see those who have stayed close to home and those who have moved far away. It was a weekend spent renewing old friendships and creating new ones. My best high school friend, Amy, was one of those who had moved away. I had not spoken to her in over ten years. We had friended on Facebook only about six months earlier. She mentioned she was hoping to come to the reunion, and was looking for a place to stay. I told her she and her daughter were welcome to stay with us. As the boys who seemed to have been the cause of our lapse in friendship were in neither of our lives anymore, she agreed.

We couldn’t wait to renew our friendship. Amazingly, it was like it had been ten minutes since our last conversation, not ten years. No one from our class could believe we had spent that amount of time apart. Within the first 2 minutes we were “The Amys” again. We spent hours talking and catching up just the two of us even after spending the evening with the rest of the class, sharing our lives with them. We stepped right back into the spaces we had left in each other’s lives. She came back to complete me.

Not surprisingly, during the reunion I spent a lot of time in reflection. I saw a lot of people who I had lost touch with. One person I did not see was Erin. She was a year younger, and had changed schools before graduation. I had run into her one LATE night at Village Inn about 12 years ago, but had no idea where she was now. I wished I knew how to contact her.

Ten days after Amy’s visit, I got a new Facebook friend request. The first name was Erin, but I did not recognize the last name. Darn that whole job thing, I was at work on my Blackberry and couldn’t see any details. Could it really be THAT Erin? How ironic would that be? Here I am, wishing I knew how to find her and she looks me up! At home, I logged in to see it was, indeed, her. I immediately accepted the request. That whole ‘Throw it out to the Universe and the Universe will answer’ thing really worked this time.

Catching up with Erin was an eerie déjà vu of catching up with Amy. It is astounding how much we are alike after all these years. Our passion for Disney, we even have the same favorite resort. She says her husband is glad we have reconnected. Now he is relieved of some of her Disney discussions. Our daughters, both are competitive tumblers/cheerleaders. Even our jobs are similar.

I may not have been able to pick a decent boy in high school, but DANG can I pick a perfect girl friend or two.

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In these economic times it’s important to get your money’s worth.

October 19, 2009 · Filed under Daily Updates · Tagged Bosses' Day, Brownies, work

: Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

On Friday, my team took Tina, our supervisor, out to lunch for Bosses’ Day. Did you know Friday was Bosses’ Day? I hope you showed your Boss the appropriate respect and admiration on their Hallmark day. Tina showed us the lovely gifts she had gotten for our CIO, who she reports to. She even let us play with the ‘Boss Toss’ before she wrapped it for him. We were catapulting little plastic boss figures all over cubeville on Thursday. Our gift to her was much less exciting. We chipped in to buy Tina a plant and we let her choose lunch.

The restaurant she chose was a fairly new one near our office. It has been open for six months or so, but I had not eaten there, yet. Of the people I had talked to who had tried it out I had heard two things. One, it was very good. Fabulous, as Tina would say. Or two, it was pricey. On this day I was just along for the ride.

The décor was very opulent. Marble flooring. Dark wood tables. Classical art on the walls. While we waited for our table to be ready I spied the display case of desserts in the front entry. Some of them looked simply divine. There were cheesecakes and fruit crumbles. There were tortes and brownies.

As we discussed the menu and what we were going to order, Joan warned us she was ordering soup and dessert. She did not want us to be shocked when that was all she ordered for her meal. Sounded good to me. The plan would have worked out much better if our waitress had understood what she was asking for. We were all finished with our meals before her dessert was served.

The sandwich I had ordered was very good. And filling. However, as I sat there watching Joan eating her dessert alone, all I could think about were those lovely brownies in the display case up front. When the waitress came by to pick up my check, I caved. I asked her to add a brownie.

Holy cow! That wasn’t a brownie, it was a half pan of brownies! It was a 5 inch by 2 ½ inch slab of chocolate drizzled with caramel and chocolate sauce. It increased my bill by $7.00. As I gazed at the dinner-plate covered in sweet, gooey goodness, I figured it was worth it. Then I took a bite. Buyer’s remorse immediately set in. It was more like fudge than a brownie. I love brownies. I’m not a big fan of fudge. It was cold. I really prefer my brownies warm.

I ate maybe a quarter of it, wishing the whole time it was something all together different. Then I asked for a box to take the remainder home. The box was more for show. I didn’t want to look wasteful leaving three-fourths of it on the table when we left. But I doubted it would get eaten at home. I knew how I felt about it. Princess Girl doesn’t eat anything with caramel on it so I knew she wouldn’t eat it either. Oh well, it could sit in the fridge for a couple days and then get thrown out.

Saturday afternoon brilliance struck. I had the amazing thought, ‘I wonder if that brownie would be any better if I warmed it up.’ Not one to let moss grow under my feet when genius is stirring, I cut off another quarter of that brownie and stuck it in the microwave for 15 seconds. What emerged was a melty, gooey, molten BROWNIE-like brownie. Covered in caramel and chocolate sauce. Ah, the heavenly substance I had looked for on Friday had finally been found.

Now THAT was worth the $7.00.

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I respectfully submit, here, my application for Mother of the Year.

October 16, 2009 · Filed under Daily Updates · Tagged Asthma, Health, high school, Medicine, Princess Girl

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Shortly before she turned ten, Princess Girl began complaining of chest pains. Like all good mothers, I promptly imagined all sorts of horrible defective things that could be wrong with her. And the myriad of equally horrible treatments she would have to undergo. I scheduled an appointment with her pediatrician. He didn’t make me feel one bit better. With his medical knowledge, he informed me of all the things it really could be. And then we made appointments with the heart specialist and the pulmonary department at the hospital to have her tested for asthma.

At the time, I was thankful her diagnoses turned out to be exercise induced asthma. Frankly, I still am. There were countless options it could have been that would have been so much worse. Exercise induced asthma was something we could live with. Something we could treat. Something, if we were lucky, she could grow out of.

Her pediatrician put her on an inhaled steroid and prescribed a rescue inhaler. For the most part this seems to solve her issues. If she remembered to take her rescue inhaler before exercise she would be fine. Sprinting and playing basketball were the big offenders. Over the course of the next year and a half we visited the emergency room three or four times for asthma attacks we just could not get under control. Her doctor adjusted the dosage of her inhaled steroid and things seemed better.

In middle school she joined the track team. As her mother I thought this was silly. She had enough trouble with the sprints in basketball. But of course what did I know. Besides, she was going to be a jumper. Imagine my surprise, at the first meet, when she lined up to run the 200 meter dash. Imagine my distress when, as she rounded the corner of the track, I could see her little chest heaving from lack of air. I put my foot down. She could not run that far. Her asthma would not allow it. So she adjusted. She set her mind on the fact she was a sprinter, not a distance runner.

This past spring we transitioned Princess Girl from the pediatrician to a family doctor. The new doctor, who is also my physician, reviewed her charts and discussed with us the asthma situation. She thought with an adjustment of the inhaled steroid we could even better control the asthma. It worked. Princess Girl was using her rescue inhaler less during cheer and tumbling.

Then high school started. In high school PE 80% of your grade is participation. In high school PE you run either three minutes in the gym or 400 meters on the track every day. In high school PE if you don’t run the entire time you are deducted 1-2 participation points every day. Within a few short weeks, Princess Girl’s participation grade was on a downhill slide. I worked with Princess Girl to give her key words to use to speak with her PE teacher regarding her participation grade. Even though her asthma diagnoses is on her school physical the teacher required a note from the doctor listing specific restrictions to have the grades reconsidered.

Conveniently, we already had an asthma re-check scheduled with the doctor. So this week we attended the appointment. We proudly discussed how well Princess Girl was doing. She bragged about the fact she had only used her rescue inhaler during two games this cheer season. Then we began discussing the PE issues. Princess Girl explained the daily running requirement she could never complete. She talked about the timed mile she could not finish with a grade higher than a “C”. I told the physician how you can see the asthma kick in at 200 meters as she sprints across the track. We finished with the request of a note to the teacher to excuse this lack in Princess Girl’s abilities.

The doctor’s response? “You are athletic. You should easily be able to run a mile.”

Good thing I was sitting down. I know the doctor could see the confusion on my face. I told her I have witnessed what happens to Princess Girl when she runs. You can see the point where she can no longer has enough air. She can’t run 1/8 of a mile.

We have two options. The first is she needs additional medication to regulate her asthma. The second is there is something else going on besides the asthma. Do you know that statement put me right back to the place I was in when she first started having chest pains? That nightmare feeling of “What horrible thing is wrong with my baby???” Obviously, we are tackling option one first. We are trying a new medication.

I have all my fingers and toes crossed that this will solve everything. At least that would mean I have only tortured my child needlessly for the last three years by not having her asthma treated adequately.