Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Rachelle Gardner at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Soul Train
- Live Out Your Dream And Discard The Box
- Tears In A Bottle
- From The Young Mom I Once Was, To You
- I Can’t Help Falling
- What A Difference Ten Years Makes
- The Next Best Thing To Robert Redford
- The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
- Where Have All The Years Gone
- Fun With Kiki Cullen
- Stuck On Mom
- Ten Years Later, Our Girls From Northern Ireland Remembered
- The Thrift of Grief
- Job Security
- The Party’s Over
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
Big Fish?
You know what I think?
(Warning: Serious Rant Just Ahead.)
I think that people in the medical profession—especially those old-school docs who believe that a patient and her family members should be seen, not heard, and heavily billed—should go ahead and figure out that some of us have google and know how to search it.
Because you know what? One of these days, I may pull this particular blog post out of the fallible archives and say “See here? When I documented for the entire Internet that before you dismissed my mother-in-law from the hospital on December 18, 2006, I googled ‘Vitamin B12 deficiency cancer,’ I didn’t do it for grins.”
Adele’s been in the hospital three times in six weeks. And spent two of those six weeks in a nursing home. Today, though, they’re sending her back to her assisted living apartment. Not only do they not know why she’s having these extreme bouts of dizziness and very low blood pressure (and I do understand that things like this aren’t always diagnoseable), but now Dr. G. is denying that she has non-exixtent B-12, a condition that’s been well-established in the past month.
See, in June of 2005, Adele had a near-death experience resulting in surgery to remove horrible abscesses which were wrapped around and connecting her gall bladder, liver, pancreas and etc. Then she’s told last month that she’s not absorbing B-12, which can cause all kinds of symptoms like dizziness, dementia, and neurological damage, some of which may be irreversible even if the vitamin problem is corrected.
Two days ago, a different doctor told the family that he was ordering consults with a hematologist and an oncologist, but he didn’t tell them what exactly he might be looking for.
So I google and find out that when certain abdominal surgeries are performed on an elderly person, B-12 should be automatically given by injection afterwards because the surgery may interfere with the body’s ability to absorb the vitamin if taken orally. And then the information went on to say that in a subset of patients who are not treated thusly, stomach cancer develops.
Hence, I suspect, the mention of an oncology consult. But even if they found something like stomach cancer, there’s not much they’d do about it. It’s usually discovered way late in the game, and she’s far too fragile for chemo or more surgery. Besides, little symptoms like losing a gazillion pounds without trying and having bouts of diarrhea don’t mean much in the bigger picture, do they? Purely incidental findings, wouldn’t you say?
Of course, none of this matters at all, because the good news is that as of today, all consults are off! And guess what? Not only are they not going to give her the daily shots they prescribed last night as being absolutely essential to turning her situation around, but she doesn’t have a B-12 deficiency at all! Ha! Such fun we’re having with her and her kids, jerking them around with all our talk about tests and specialists!!!
We’re sending Adele home, to live out her last days in the kind of oblivion formerly enjoyed by everyone, before google made it so pesky family members could figure out what the heck was going on by keying in a couple well-placed key words! Surely Adele’s family doesn’t include anyone who actually uses the Internet, does it?
She may be fine, people, but my head is spinning from all the back-pedaling I’ve witnessed in the last 48 hours. So I thought I’d just get it documented right here, right now.
I hope they’re telling the truth and I can’t read plain English. That would make everything much simpler going forward. But right now, something smells mighty fishy, and I’m no where near a Joe’s Crabshack.
The Race Is On
I don’t know what style of Christmas shopper you are, but I’m the type who feels guilty at the last minute.
I began this whole event with a benchmark in place—the $$ I’d put into Traveling Kevin’s bank account to cover his Christmas break in Europe, which officially begins today. Tonight, he’ll take the train to Paris, where he’ll stay in a hostel for two nights before moving on to Germany to do the same. Then he’ll join a new friend of his in Austria, where he’ll spend Christmas with that guy’s family—an invitation for which I am most grateful.
Anyway, I started doing the comps and feeling like one of the kid’s hauls just didn’t pile up like the others, and that I have to make things fair. Because, really, I DO love them all equally and what if one of them began to think otherwise?
My daughter-in-law, Brooke? She’s like my own daughter, and I want her to KNOW that. And then there’s my soon-to-be son-in-law, Marc. Why, it wouldn’t do for him to feel like he’s any less a part of the family than the others, would it?
Yesterday, I’ll tell you, was like a horse race. Carrie was the first one out of the shoot, FAR ahead of the laggers for upwards of an hour. Then I went to Kohl’s and very nearly plunked down enough $$ to put Scott in the lead—but no. The saleslady reminded me that the Super Power Hours didn’t start until 3 pm, and I’d do well to come back then for even better bargains.
I left empty-carted. When I got home, I logged onto Kohl’s website to see if I could pick up an item that the stores are always out of—something for Marc. Of course, to get the free shipping, I had to spend $75. Luckily, I knew of several other things he wanted, so it didn’t take long for him to pull into the lead.
By the time Power Hours started, Doug and I were in the physical store again, where Brooke caught up with the rest of the horses. Then, on the way home, we stopped at Lowe’s, and darned if Scott didn’t win the race by a hare.
That’s right, a hare.
How long can I keep up this frenzied equalizing? Until the stores close on Christmas Eve, that’s how long.
But running into this video on YouTube is helping me rein it in a bit. Steve Martin is one of my favorite men. Hope you love it as much as I do.
Good Christmas Shopping to you!
The Giver
What can you say about a God who would spend eternity planning to interrupt time with the gift of His redemptive love?
It’s not like He hadn’t tried a thousand times before the Nativity, tried to reach into the lives of those He created, tried to show them the way back to Him. They’d listen sometimes, too, and follow for a while, until things got too good and they didn’t think they needed what He had to offer anymore.
He knew what He would do all along, of course. He knew that giving the children of Israel His law would only serve to show them how far they’d fallen, and how they could never really be redeemed by the blood of goats and lambs. He gave them the law as a gift, but it was purposely incomplete, like giving a beautiful new car without a key or a platinum setting minus the perfect center diamond.
We tear into gifts on Christmas Day as if we’re missing something, as if the Father hadn’t already given us everything pertaining to life and godliness when He gave us Jesus, as if we still need something…else.
My heart is breaking this Christmas. I am close to so many hurting people, and it makes me sad that the one gift Who makes all the difference is often the Only One left untouched.
When you finish with the opening of the season’s bounty, when you’re gathering up the leftover debris of paper and ribbons and bows, take another look around the room to be certain you didn’t miss something…or Someone. There, in your child’s eyes, in your mother’s voice, in your friend’s smile, you just may find Him once again.
What can you say about a God who spent eternity past to give you the Christmas present of His Son? There is none like Him.
Not Just One Mama Mia, Either
Carrie just popped into our bedroom to say good-bye. Hard to believe she’s already lived with us for over four months, but it’s true. It’s lovely having her here.
“Well,” I said, “they went ahead and admitted her last night.”
She shrugged her shoulders, clueless. “Who?”
“Grandma.”
“Grandma Who?” Poor Carrie.
She’d gone to Grandma Mary’s last night at my request. I was supposed to meet her there, where we were going to help Mom put together a “craft”—her contribution to our family’s gift exchange, an event she’s been stressing and obsessing about with a level of depression normally reserved for unhappy circumstances.
My mother’s been having a Holiday Meltdown Of Tremendous Proportions. She’s one of those people who shouldn’t be around weapons or alcohol or bungee cords or drugs from Halloween through Valentine’s Day. And then again from Easter until Labor Day. She’s safe, I think, except for the drugs—which always seem to flow way more freely than they should.
I never arrived at Mom’s. My car had a Holiday Meltdown, too. It was already dark when The Call Of The Mama lured me from my home, and I cannot see to drive after dark. But, heck. Mom only lives 15 minutes down the road, and I always say I could get there with my eyes closed. Of course, I could. As long as someone else was driving. My car’s defroster decided to malfunction completely and driving blind AND deaf takes all the thrill out of the sport.
So I pulled into our church parking lot, an eight-minute drive from our house, crying because I’d nearly wrecked the car, and found my cell phone in my purse. Why I carry the darned thing, I don’t know. I can’t hear on cell phones, but you know? In this day and age, it seems like the safe thing to do. Of course, since I never use it and don’t remember to recharge it because I never use it, I never…um…use it.
The church, bless its heart, looked open. I let myself in and experienced the meaning of the word “sanctuary.” I found a phone and called Doug, who said he’d come to get me. Then I tried to call Carrie’s cell, but she doesn’t answer it if she doesn’t recognize the number. An attempt to call my mother—who would now be worried because Carrie had arrived and I had not—turned up nothing. Were the two of them up in the facility’s lobby waiting for me? Who knew?
I waited and waited for Doug, and then decided to give my hobo bag a good jingle. Sure enough—I had not one but both sets of keys. Leaving him at home with a car but no way to drive one. I tried to call him again, but got no answer on either the home phone or his cell.
After thirty minutes of waiting, he showed up at the church. He’d found a spare key somewhere. Carrie finally answered the phone in Mom’s apartment and I talked Mom down from the ceiling. “Tomorrow,” I said, “in the daylight. I will be there. I promise.”
Doug had to go home for a business meeting. One of our cars got Left Behind at the church. Turned out Doug can’t see too well in the dark, either. He almost hit a concrete barrier that he mistook for a deer, swerving with such vigor to miss it that I had to take a muscle relaxor for my neck. Thirty seconds up the road, a genuine deer encountered a very near miss with Doug, who didn’t swerve at all that time.
“Which Grandma?” Carrie repeated, car keys in one hand and sack lunch in the other.
“Grandma Adele, of course. Who did you think I meant?”
That’s what happens when you go to bed at 10:30 like she does. You only THINK you’re up-to-the-minute on The Grandma Brigade, but trust me, if you blink, you miss something.
Doug’s mother spent much of November in the hospital and then the nursing home before going back to her assisted living apartment. Last night was her second ambulance trip to the hospital this month. They did not want to send her home like they did last week because…well, they are clueless why her blood pressure keeps bottoming out.
Today may be one of those Doug And Katy Raymond Divide And STILL Don’t Conquer Days, or we both may do both of The Moms. Together.
Together. Yeah, that sounds good.
When I’m Old, I Will NEVER….
OK, here’s the deal. It’s come to my attention over the course of nearly 53 years of observation that we humans spend a lot of time thinking about and committing to various versions of “When I grow up, I will be a different kind of parent…” or “When I get my own apartment, I will always have a bag of chocolate chips in the freezer…” or “I will never let my body go to heck in a handbasket like my mother or grandmother or sister or aunt has.”
You get the idea. You’ve said this stuff, too, right?
At this stage of my life, the thing I’m promising myself, my husband, and my children I will NEVER do is accumulate so much worthless junk that my descendents are unduly burdened with unsaddling it either before or after my demise. I tell myself EVERY DAY that I will stay on top of it, stay free of it, deal with it. And yet, I can’t help but notice that old people invariably stop dealing, and their kids have to do the job—kids who, while they chisel their way through the old folks’ debris, promise that THEY will never do such a thing to their children.
So tell me. What have you promised you’ll do differently than the behavior that’s been patterned for you? What makes you believe you can break the pattern? Do we merely deceive ourselves when we make these commitments, or is there hope? (Please, tell me there’s hope, even if you have to lie to do it.)
And if you have any reassurances you’d like to offer my adorable children about the future state of dear, old Mom and Pop’s basement, attic, and garage, I’m sure they’d appreciate the comfort right about now.
Repetitive Stress Ministries
I know. Most people suffer sports injuries while actually doing…sports.
Not me. I learned my lesson on that years ago. In a flurry of binge-exercising sixteen years ago, I purchased a chintzy stair-stepper and went to town. OK, maybe not town, exactly. More like the operating room, but then, you’d probably already figured that out about me, right?
My orthopedic man fixed one of my knees (and I’ve managed to ignore the other one ever since) but I’ll tell you what: that was a very painful surgery from which to recover, complicated by the fact that I had a previously scheduled 5 for the price of 5 twelve-hour operation a mere six weeks later. Since then, my friends, I’ve sworn off surgery in a big way—except, of course, for brain surgery. But come on! Who counts that?
In order to swear off surgery, I’ve had to swear off exercise-induced injury. The beauty of lifting free weights eludes me, since the herniated disks (or is it discs? I don’t know…) in my neck cry out for mercy when I attempt so much as the hoisting of a gallon of 2% into the shopping cart. I cannot tolerate the pounding of pavement or any other surface less shock absorbant than shag carpet.
Mercifully, I no longer own any shag carpet.
I am able and sometimes go through spurts of using our treadmill, on which I’ve never injured myself, but I digress. Excercise, for me, is almost always a digression.
My topic today is not really sports injuries. It’s repetitive stress injuries, a subject with which I have far more intimate and ongoing familiarity. And more specifically, it’s what I have come to call repetitive stress ministries.
A repetitive stress ministry is one you can’t bear to give up, even though every joint and ganglion cyst you possess rebels against your heart. The ministry I don’t want to abandon is called Mercy and Truth in Kansas City. Cathy Gordon, the ministry’s founder, is an RN who has made medical missions her life. Besides setting up clinics in locations around the world, she runs several here in town. She even operates a birthing clinic, with the bulk of the mothers living below the poverty level.
A few years ago, I decided I couldn’t bear for these new moms—many of whom do not have heated homes—to leave the birthing clinic without a handmade afghan for their babies. And for a while, I cranked those puppies out, too—keeping up with the growing number of births with some efficiency. Then, well—repetitive stress set in and I had to have my dumb finger operated on.
Since then, I’ve barely crocheted. In fact, I haven’t crocheted.
Around the time I had surgery, though, a young woman who belongs to the same national writers group I do—American Christian Fiction Writers—contacted me. We’d never met, but she read my profile on the group’s website and saw that I loved to make blankies for babies. She asked if she could help.
Could she? Today I received an enormous carton of crocheted afghans plus a whole slew of darling hats for the babies at Mercy and Truth. A gift from Kathleen Morphy and her friend Karen, who enclosed a handwritten card for each new mother.
Maybe the hugest blessing to me is this: Kathleen has terrible tendonitis. She is a writer, and can hardly type because of the pain. In her daily life, she helps her mother take care of her dad, who has Lou Gehrig’s disease. Yet out of the goodness of her heart, she also stepped in to help me—a complete stranger.
Kathleen, I want to thank you here and now for joining with me in this Repetitive Stress Ministry. You’ve shown some sweet babies and their moms a lot of love.
May God completely heal you and grant you the grace to do all He’s planned for your life. And a blessed, merry Christmas to you.
Doug’s In His Office, All’s Right With The World
He’s better today. He’s in his home office and I’m in mine. We’re both working, and shooting love emails back and forth. Yeah. It’s like that.
Yesterday, though, I feared for him. Here’s why:
We sat in Starbucks for a few minutes, going over a section of my manuscript. It was during the middle of the work day, so he was likely expecting phone calls. He stopped talking to me long enough to pat his pants, over the pocket area.
“I thought my phone was vibrating,” he said, “but it’s not.”
I stared at him before asking, “So, it’s your LEG?”
“Yep.”
Trust me. You’d be scared, too.
Bing, Not Bling
Doug and I were out and about this morning, staying one step ahead of the snow storm. On the road, we got to talking about some of our favorite feel good songs of all time.
I mentioned “Till There Was You,” which the Beatles recorded back in the day, but which was of course a redux, having been originally performed on Broadway in the Music Man. All in all, not THAT much of an oldie, when you’re as old as we are. Sigh.
Then Doug started singing one of his all-time faves, kind of serenading me now that I look back on it, in his deep crooning voice.
“She may be weary—women do get weary…”
“Oh, no….” I groaned. “Don’t tell me she’s STILL—-”
“...Wearing the same shabby dress….”
“Noooo. It reminds me too much of Glen Campbell singing ‘these are the dreams of the everyday housewife.’ Do we have to go THERE?”
“And when she’s weary,” he sang, “try a little tenderness.”
“You know what I think?” I interrupted his vocal reverie. “If she’s so weary, wearing the same shabby dress—”
And then, we both said the identical words at the EXACT same time.
“Buy her a freakin’ new dress!”
We laughed till we cried. When we got home, I looked up the song and found that Bing Crosby recorded it in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. When he sang about “shabby,” he didn’t mean “shabby chic.” He just meant shabby, and a whole lot of it. The rest of the lyric is very touching, and I have now repented of my disgust for the man who thought a little tenderness would get him off the dress-buying hook.
“You know she’s waiting, just anticipating
Things she may never possess;
While she’s without them, try a little tenderness.
It’s not just sentimental,
She has her grief and care,
And a word that’s soft and gentle,
Makes it easier to bear.
You won’t regret it—women don’t forget it;
Love is their whole happiness.
It’s all so easy—try a little tenderness.”
Any old, sweet songs you’re singing today?
Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful. But A Lockdown’s So Delightful!
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but my darling daughter is teaching severely disabled 7-year-olds in a public school in the very extremely urban core of Kansas City.
She left here this morning a bit worried about the weather. We live 45 minutes from her school, and on Wednesday nights, she’s supposed to go even farther north to take classes toward her Master’s in special ed. But our favorite meteorologist, Carrie’s fiance Marc, warned her that tonight would not be a good night to get caught outside. She didn’t know if she should attempt to go to class or not, since then the drive home (late at night) would be 1.5 hours in good weather.
So she packed a bag in case she ended up in a hotel somewhere, or at her brother’s house in town. But then she forgot her wallet containing her debit card and all her ID. And her cell phone wouldn’t hold a charge. And she was out of gas, never a plan in Kansas City in the winter. But I digress.
The ice storm began in earnest around noon—many hours earlier than most of the local TV weather forecasters predicted. They’d all said the rush hour would be completely over before the ice made things unbearable. NOT.
So at 3:20, I called her phone and used one of the last bits of juice she had. “Where are you? Katie Horner on Channel 5 says it’s nasty out there.”
I could hear little children in the background, so I knew she was still at school. “Um…I can’t leave yet. We have a bit of a situation here. I’ll try to call you back, but my phone is dyyyyyiiiiinnnnnngggggggg….........”
“Carrie, are you OK?”
“I’m oooookkkkkkaaaaaayyyyyyyyy…....”
Fade to black.
So I waited. And waited. And waited. She finally called Marc to say she was headed to his Mom’s—a much shorter drive which still took her an hour—and he called us. As she pulled up to their house, she called me once more.
“Did Marc tell you about the situation at school?”
“No. What happened?” I’d been so worried about the roads, I’d forgotten the school.
“All the teachers were outside loading the children into the busses. It was pouring sleet, of course. There are these two fifth grade girls who hate each other and constantly fight on the bus. So their parents showed up on the school grounds—with posses of their friends!—and started a big brawl.”
“In an ice storm? Carrie! Is everyone OK?”
“The mother of one of the fifth graders turned to the other mother and said, ‘Do you want me to pull my gun out of my purse right now?’ and then someone shouted to get the kids back in the school and into the gym. We went on immediate lockdown and within minutes the place was swarming with cops.”
“Carrie!”
“It’s over, Mom. Really. I’m here now. I’m at Marc’s.”
Ice pellets—frozen bits of nature’s unleashed anger—beat relentlessly against my bedroom window as I prayed.
Dear Lord, between You and Marc, please take care of our Care Bear.
What If He Were YOUR Son?
If you got an email like this from your baby son, the one you hadn’t seen for THREE WHOLE MONTHS and who you would not be seeing until January 17, what would YOU do?? Especially after reading the last line? I’m tellin’ you what.
“hello mother.
some news from switzerland. i need money. i know these are hard times for us all, but i still must ask. they are asking for the money to stay in the room over christmas, on the days before i leave (to see the world). so i said i would be here at the school, i think, five days out of the break. they are asking for 250 swiss francs for accomodation and food. also they want the money for graduation dinner this week which is 103 swiss francs. that equals 353Sfr or 292.267 US dollars.
in other news: i love you! it may sound like i am trying to sweet talk you, but i assure you i am.
Kev”
Honestly, what WOULD you do?
The Ultimate Gift
Here’s a holiday question for you. If you could only give one gift this year, what would it be and to whom would you give it?
It doesn’t have to cost anything, or it could cost a gazillion bucks. Whether you actually have the means to afford the gift doesn’t matter for our purposes. This is just to get our creative Christmas juices flowing. The dream gift could be given to any person—dead or alive. If you want most to give Whirled Peas to the President of Iran, go for it!
Right now, I’m thinking I’d love to do the work I’ve been postponing on Family Tree Maker and give my siblings the Gift of Roots.
When my father died nearly 23 years ago, he knew the names of his parents and that’s all. Didn’t know their birthdays or birth places, except to say “Scotland” for his mother and “Ireland” for his father.
My father came to this country from Scotland at the end of WWII as a 26-year-old orphan, who’d already served eight years in the British Army. He literally came with the clothes on his back, and he wasn’t stylin’, believe me. His Uncle Frank, himself an Irish immigrant, sponsored my father to come over—along with five of my dad’s six siblings.
In those days, immigration was strictly controlled. You couldn’t get in to America without a sponsor guaranteeing that if you turned out to be a slouch, the sponsor would be completely responsible for supporting you. It was a huge responsibility for the married-but-childless Uncle Frank to take on—and a huge risk. Frank’s place, in a neighborhood in Kansas City which was at that time an enclave of Irish immigrants, became a flop house for his nieces and nephews.
My father and his brothers would work by day, drink and gamble by night, and land on the living room floor just inside Frank’s front door during the wee hours. They didn’t even have beds, the joint was so packed. Of course, even if they’d had beds, they were too drunk to climb the stairs. They’d stagger off the floor in the morning and lather, rinse, repeat.
My mother killed Uncle Frank in 1959, a night I remember well. He came to our place for dinner—the first and last time he ventured to do so—and she fed him something innocuous seeming like spaghetti and meatballs. The Irish cannot abide by a meal like that, and she should have known better. They don’t do casseroles, and want their meats and starches strictly separated on the plate. Anyway, he went home that night and evidently dropped dead from the shock.
Mom killed her own father similarly, with a breakfast of bacon and eggs, after which he only survived an hour, but this blog entry is NOT supposed to be about my mother’s high (or low) culinary crimes and misdemeanors, now is it?
It’s supposed to be about the gift of a lifetime. I’d like to finish the work I’ve started on my father’s family history, and present it to my siblings. And my cousins, for that matter. It’s important to me that they think of their dad in terms of his place in an age-old story, not as just another guy who got plunked down here for a few years and then was gone.
That’s my dream gift, and those are my dream recipients.
What’s yours?
Hey, Good Lookin’. What’s Cookin’?
Tis the season, baby. Whether you’re hosting Thanksgiving at your house or eating with friends or family, chances are you’re whipping up something interesting in the kitchen.
Heck, even if you’re not technically in America, you’ve got to eat, right?
What’s cookin’ at your house this weekend? Anything your family holds as a special tradition that you absolutely refuse to live without during the holidays?
I just read on another site this morning about a concoction called “goopies.” Cloverleaf rolls which, before being placed in the muffin tins, are preceded by chunks of butter and brown sugar. I’ve got to say, that sounds FANTASTIC.
Today Carrie and I will be assembling a carload of bacon-wrapped water chestnuts. Soy sauce and brown sugar will be involved, with a Splenda substitute on a few for the low-freakin’-carbers. Mmmm-mmmm.
Tell me about your kitchen escapades, especially traditions you just can’t give up.
And have a Very Extremely Happy Thanksgiving!
Pretty Seedy If You Ask Me
“I’ll need you to arrive at least fifteen minutes ahead of time to fill out a few forms,” Bea, Dr. Couchonnal’s nurse, said.
Yeah. Yeah. Even with my mother’s medications list ready to photocopy and her history of previous surgeries, hospitalizations, diseases, fractured bones, and accidents (along with their dates, the names of the attending doctors, etc.) emblazoned forever on my consciousness, it’s gonna take more than fifteen minutes.
Give me thirty minutes and a high-quality pen, and I can make it happen. Throw in power of attorney, and you’ve got yourself a deal.
Mom has been battling a nasty infection in a fingertip for weeks, and now—despite antibiotics both oral and topical—it’s spread to the bone. Osteomyelytis. With a fine infectious disease doctor, probably IV antibiotics, and God’s mercy, she’ll probably get to keep her finger. We’ll see.
As for me, the entire landscape of my dining room has been called up for re-evaluation.
The doctor’s nurse continued to rattle off specifics of what to bring to the office visit besides my poor mother. “I’ll need the results of her most recent blood work.”
“They did it last week,” I said. “Forward thinking man that her GP is, he ordered the sed rate and C-reactive protein, in addition to checking her white blood count.”
“Great!” she said. “What about a plain x-ray?”
“Sorry,” I said. “We’ve only got an MRI. You’ll have to do the plain films yourself.”
“Can do,” she said, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to make a trip back over to Diagnostic Imaging to pick up the CD of the MRI.”
“Whatchoo talkin’ about, CD? No films in enormous manila envelopes, so big they take up the back seat of the car and blind me like a white-out blizzard when I’m trying to carry them down a flight of stairs?”
“Films? That’s SO early 2006. We’ve all gone to CDs, honey. Call ahead and they’ll have your mother’s waiting…”
“Sure,” I said, “but what am I going to do with my china cabinet? It serves no useful purpose except to—”
“Your china cabinet? I don’t under—”
“I keep my skull back there! And my mother’s broken humerus! And my daughter’s foot, my sinuses, my mother’s entire skeleton, my mother-in-law’s abdominal abscesses and my ovaries! Where am I supposed to keep my ovaries?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Raymond. Doctor is NOT a gynocologist. But if your china cabinet needs a purpose-driven life, why not just get it some china?”
Smart alec.
Can Robin Lee Hatcher Carry A Tune? I Don’t Know, But Her Writing Sings In “A Carol For Christmas”
I am honored to have a wonderful author as a guest on fallible today! Robin Lee Hatcher—still thin even with fifty novels under her belt—has written a beautiful holiday novella called “A Carol for Christmas.” We’ll be giving a copy to one blessed commenter, chosen randomly from among those of you who leave a comment on this post. It’s a lovely story, and short—fantastic for getting in “the mood.” Which leads me to my first question for Robin:
Q. I always have a bit of a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit “on demand.” Shopping doesn’t thrill me (although giving does), and decorations in public before Halloween even arrives? That just freaks me out. A good Christmas story, though, never fails to get me in the mood. I could read “A Christmas Carol” every year, and now I may add “A Carol for Christmas” to my short list. How will your story affect the hearts of readers who might be a little too humbuggy for their own good?
A. For so many, Christmas has become all about spending too much money and getting run too ragged. I would hope that A Carol for Christmas would remind readers that Christmas should be about love—loving others and being loved by God.
Q. There are quite a number of aspiring writers who read fallible. I think they’d be fascinated with a description of your office. Can you describe it for us, and tell us how it suits your writing habits and style? (If you’d like to share any pics, that would be great!)
A. I cannot believe I’m going to share these pictures! And they are of the neat, organized part of my office. I just couldn’t handle taking any photos of the worst parts.
I had my office designed about seven years ago with built-in cupboards, filing cabinets, and countertops. The photos are of just a small part of that countertop area that runs around three sides of the office. I have books and papers spread all over it.
The messier it is, the farther along I am in writing my book. When a deadline is met, I spend time trying to eliminate the paper blizzard and tidy up again before the next round of writing begins. Right now I’m doing line edits and am almost done with another book. In other words, the mess is driving me nuts.
I do just about all of my writing at my desktop computer. It’s setup to be ergonomically friendly. I do have a laptop and occasionally will do some writing on it, for a change of scenery. However, I do better in my office. I like to have my reference books and tools close at hand.
Q. I know your life hasn’t been free of trouble, and yet you’ve given appreciative audiences 50 novels. How do you manage to keep writing day after day when “real life” derails so many of us wannabes? If there’s a secret, bottle it, please!
A. In the early part of my career, I was a mom with a full time job. I learned to write with distractions, working on my books in the evenings and on weekends (Monday through Thursday from 7 to 9 pm and Saturday mornings until noon). After nine years of that routine, I quit my day job to write full time. That was almost seventeen years ago.
When trials come, I try to subscribe to the “write anyway” philosophy. Mostly, I’ve found that writing helps me work through the difficult times. I am in control of my fictional world, even when I’m in control of little else in my own world. However, sometimes “writing anyway” simply isn’t possible. Creativity takes a holiday. I’ve discovered I have to allow myself some grace when I’m overwhelmed or wearied by life. Fill up the well. Read something uplifting. Exercise. Cry. Pray. See a movie. Laugh. Play with Poppet (my Papillon). Then go back to work.
Another important lesson I’ve learned is that how I feel about my writing has little to do with its quality. Even if I feel I have nothing to offer and my work is junk, I push onward. Two of my best books were written during times of great stress. I thought the books were awful because of my feelings. But my editors loved them, and the books turned out to be honored with a number of awards and nominations.
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Thanks, Robin, for taking the time to visit with us! Hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving with your family, and that each of our hearts will overfill with A Carol for Christmas.
Happy BrainSurgSurvivary To Me!
Nobody likes to have their head messed with, right?
Seven years ago this minute, my favorite people kissed me good-bye. And then, immediately after I flubbed-up counting backwards from ten, my head got messed with big-time.
I didn’t expect to survive brain surgery. I had peace about going through with it, though, since a tumor had robbed me of my hearing in one ear and surgery represented my only chance to recover it. It seemed like the responsible thing to do.
But honestly, surviving? I figured I had a MUCH better chance of getting my hearing back than I had of surviving.
But, hey. I come from a long line of gamblers. Hmmm….come to think of it, most of them are dead. Sheesh. What are the odds? ;)
It’s been a fascinating seven years. I’m healthier than I’ve ever been as an adult—but not as a result of tumor removal. As a result of the shock of surviving. Survival made me realize how much I owed God, my family, and myself. I got ahold of the grace to change my diet so completely that almost all of my health problems reversed. Of course, I had not wanted to believe that my poor health resulted from my lousy choices but trust me, it did.
Sometimes, for some people, it takes a shock to get turned around on life’s path, a shock to jolt you into a sudden reversal of direction and momentum.
I know what that shock feels like. It feels like the most radical everything-I’m-thankful-for-this-Thanksgiving-list ever. It feels like a new believer feels when he comes up out of the water after being baptized into New Life, and shakes off every remaining drop of his old ways.
To be given another chance—whether it’s for the second or twentieth or two thousandth time—is the most freeing feeling ever, don’t you think?
Whatever you do, don’t pass yours up.
