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 |  Just play: don't look at your hands! |
What a dumb title for a person who never got a single star  on her piano lessons!Daily practice is the thing though: the practice of noticing as well as of writing.  However, I'd much rather play duets than solos, so hop right in! You can do the melody or the base part, I don't care.  Just play along--we'll make up the tune as we go. I'll try to write regularly and deliberately. Sometimes I will do it poorly, tritely, stiltedly, obscurely. I will try to persevere regardless. It seems to be where my heart wants to go, and that means to me that God wants me there too. See you tomorrow. ![Merit Badge in Journaling
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| Well, didn't lose my keys or my wallet today and was congratulating myself when I lost my entry! Something's not working quite right here. The page was very slow to load, and then disappeared with my entry on it. Now I don't feel like re-writing it. Sigh. Was so enjoying one of my new patients today that I lost track of time and had to leave abruptly to take Seamus to the vet. The groomer said yesterday he, nevermind. The vet said today that he probably has benign tumors on his rectum, and asked me how long I thought he'd live. The vet can either do a biopsy and then remove them, making two surgeries of it, or just remove them. Makes not much sense to me to do it in two procedures if he expects to remove them even if they're benign. Maybe the deal would be that he wouldn't do anything if they aren't benign. Seamus is probably fourteen, and is definitely having some trouble controlling his back legs from time to time. Vet thinks it's his hips or back, told me to give him more glucosamine with MSM, call back in two weeks with a plan for surgery. If I don't think he has more than a year or two left in him, and the tumors aren't growing fast, he would advise not to remove them. Ick. But then again, the vet said the hard part is getting enough skin to cover the holes up well, that the surgery may not heal well. Ick again. |
| Yesterday, after a long Palm Sunday service, I couldn't find my car keys. I checked in all the places I'd been, except the car. I'd run back out to find a comb before the service, and was sure I'd unlocked the car door from inside, leaving the keys securely fastened to my handbag. However, I hadn't. Twenty minutes later, and after asking a number of people if they'd accidentally picked them up and pocketed them, as one woman reported having done in the past, I finally found them locked in the back seat of the car. Sigh. Fortunately, a friend gave me a ride home, way out of her way because I live in the next town, and I got my extra key and a ride back to church to fetch the car. Today I got up early and got Seamus to the groomer before 8a.m., then went to work for an hour and then to the staff meeting at church. By then it was not quite time to pick up the dog, and not quite enough time to see a patient, so I went to the grocery. With my basket full, I discovered at the cash register that I had no wallet. Left my basket in the cold locker, (I think that's what they called it) and went on to get the dog, then home. I could not find the wallet. I knew I'd had it Saturday, only because I talked to Bill and he reminded me that he'd balanced my checkbook and had given it back to me. (The checkbook is in the wallet.) So at least I didn't have to retrace my steps back to Friday! I thought I'd have noticed when turning out my purse hunting for my keys that the wallet was missing, but evidently not. I also thought I'd looked everywhere when I called to find out what I had to do to get a new driver's license. I went to the study and bent over to pick up the file folder where we keep birth certificates and passports, etc., and spied the wallet hiding on the card table beneath the lid of a file box where we'd been working on taxes. Yay-y-y-y-y! Now, on to more fun things. Here's my new merit badge from Highwinds for the best March entry in the Weekly Flash Fiction contest. |
| I am trying, tonight, to post some of these beautiful pictures I took on my trips to see patients last week, and of the cherry orchards near us. It is trying my patience in the extreme. By the time I chop a picture down to 400x400, there's nothing left worth seeing. No wonder pictures of flowers are popular here. I finally succeeded at getting one small enough. I took a not very exciting picture of a hillside that showed all the horizontal lines of cow paths alongside it. Cropped way down, you can still see the paths, but the overall picture is very boring that way. Nevertheless, I'll try to post it here. ** Image ID #1241536 Unavailable ** Aha! I finally got it small enough. Urgh.   I'll try to post the link to this picture, to show you all of it. Nope. That doesn't work. |
| We filed and worked on taxes today. BIll packed, getting ready to leave at o'dark-thirty for the airport. He's meeting his son and going to the Masters' Preliminaries. And I'm staying home and feeling sorry for myself, and trying to think up some great trip I can go on with Lenore and/or Hap. Happy Palm Sunday, everyone! |
Visited a wonderful lady today who is bald from chemo. Before I left, I offered a prayer. When it was over, she asked, "Has my hair grown any?" and lifted my hand to stroke her head.  |
| Here are a few poignant scenes from the lives of hospice patients: Edna is 94 and lives in a classy, assisted living facility. The room has twin beds, one ofwhich she is lying in, and the other made up with an olive silk bedskirt and a tone-on-tone silk screen print coverlet. A large window stretches across half the wall, divided into multiple panes. Edna is dying, and her son stays with her every day, maybe even some nights. He is out of the room when I come to visit, but his cell phone is on the window sill. His laptop is open on the coffee table, his leather coat tossed across the back of one of the pair of olive velvet chairs. Next to the laptop is a large, hardbound book about birds of the Northwest, and on top of it, a pair of binoculars. Outside the window is a narrow band of woodland flanking a creek, a yellow barked willow just beginning to leaf out, two lilac colored azaleas startlingly bright against the dark stone path. Frank is a man in his 70's, appears to be in constant pain but refuses all pain killers, even Tylenol. "Everybody I've ever known who took that went crazy," he says. "One woman even howled at the dogs." The social worker convinces him to try just a little. He splits one table into four pieces, and takes one. "Better get out of my way. I'm gonna vomit any minute," he warned her. An hour later, it was still down, but he was still not sure if maybe it would be safe to try a whole pill. Joan lies in bed in a nursing home, showing no sign of being aware of my presence. This is my fifth visit, and they have all been virtually the same. Today I talk to her about the beautiful spring day, and surmise what a day like this might have been like for her twenty years ago. I ask her if she'd like to pray, and think she may have nodded slightly. Maybe. When I finish, she clearly mouths the words, "Thank you." *** Darn! I posted this before 9 and completed it later. It didn't show up, and ruined my blue month! |
| I doubt if there could be a finer spring day than today. I didn't get a chance to make my drive out in the hills to see my out-of-town patients, but I know it was wonderful too. Maybe Friday I'll take that trip, and hope the weather is nice again. The yellow daffodils and forsythia are all bloom, and now the cherry blossoms have begun, along with other flowering trees. The impressive thing today though, especially compared to the gray and rainy weather we've been having, was the the sky was out. Very blue. And the mountains had a new crop of snow. That's a combination that's hard to beat. I took some pictures, maybe will get a chance to add them here later. I just got home and it's time to get dinner, so it won't be now. Some of the pictures were of the greenhouses that are owned and operated by one of my patients. This couple started years ago planting flower pots to sell for a youth project for their church, and were so successful that they went into the business. They supply all those pots sold at Fred Meyer stores from Salt Lake City to Coeur d'Alene, growing a variety of individual plants in each pot from the start, rather than making them up out of flats of pre-grown plants like most places do. This way the roots are deep and the plants have gotten hardy. They're just beginning to show some color, should be in full bloom in two weeks. Bill hung another thistle seed feeder up for the finches this morning. There were sometimes a dozen or more feeding, and many have turned yellow by now. So pretty. We had a dozen quail in the driveway too, and sometimes have that many doves, but not today. One particular dove, who we call Humperdink, inadvertantly shooed them all away. He has something other than eating on his bird brain, and he isn't very particular about who he's chasing, first one and then another until they get irritated with him and leave. |
| For awhile today I was despairing of ever writing any more on my story. I had come up with a brief outline, and then couldn't get myself to "waste time" writing stuff I'd probably edit anyway. So while I peeled wallpaper off the dining room wall, I thought about it. Finally, I let myself think about dialogue, because that comes so much easier. When I'd think of a good interchange, I'd go write it down. By now I've gotten another 800 words in and deviated already from my outline. I changed my main character's line of work from artist, which I know nothing about, to writing teacher, which gave him a way to meet the antagonist, a student's mother. And, I looked over my virtually plotless "Mending Basket" bit of silliness and figured out a way I could fix it when I'm into editing mode. I'll make it into a parable of change! When working on my list of conflict resolutions, half of the possibilities seem to be, "change" and the other half, "stay the same." Or something to that affect, like, "Get over it and move on," or "Stay stuck." That's life, from the overly global point of view. The end of March is coming soon. Get those submissions out, all you who said you'd try to do that. Just don't ever let me hear you say I'm into submission. Or domination either, come to think of it.  |
| I got some helpful feedback on a story today, and I realized I've been forgetting about some basic points: conflict and resolution. Oops. So, to try out the idea I had the other day of putting different story elements on index cards and dealing out a plot, I tried to make some lists. Here's the list of conflicts I made: FIGHT DEATH DIVORCE LOSES JOB ATTACKED ACCIDENT THEFT HOAX FIRE All well and good, but how can you resolve those things in the space of a short story? I need some help making a better list. As for reality, I avoided some conflict at work today, but have felt the effects of it all day long. One of our new patients, not mine though, believes in reincarnation. Since he's dying, his daughters, who are Christians, are very concerned about it because it doesn't fit in with their beliefs. The other chaplain said last week that she wasn't trying to change his faith, but today she talked about reading scripture to him to do just that, to "prove" that Christianity had no room in it for New Age beliefs. That makes me angry. First of all, we're there to help with spiritual concerns, not religious ones. (His daughters' pastor is already doing his part at that!) Spiritual concerns mean the values and beliefs that bring meaning to his life. Regardless of whether the chaplain thinks he will or will not "be saved" with that "mistaken" belief, she doesn't have the right to try to convert him, even if the daughters want her to. Second, and here too I may run into some opposition from readers, I don't think it makes any difference what he believes will happen after he dies. If it's really iimportant to him to think he'll be able to communicate with his wife even after death, what does that hurt? Why would it be a good thing to take away his hope? (You'll realize right away that I don't believe it's up to us to "save" people, to get them to say "the right" words or believe "the right" things. I really, truly believe that, whatever salvation may be, it comes to us from the grace of God alone. Both St. Paul and Martin Luther have made the same point, so it's not heretical or anything.  )If I were trying to write a story about this situation, the conflict would be between the father and the daughters, and would be resolved if he gave in. Or even if he didn't, right? The conflict I know about, between me and the other chaplain, will not really occur because I won't tell her I think she doesn't know her job. Asking her what scripture she read to him and why undoubtedly gave her a hint of my opinion-- even though I was asking because I wanted to understand what she was thinking. I hadn't drawn a conclusion about it at the time. Even if a fictional character were to say, "What the heck did you think you were doing?" I don't know how the conflict would be resolved in the story. Apart from this scenario, when I re-read stories I've written, I can't always identify the conflict. Sometimes that reads to me like something is missing, and sometimes it doesn't. Any comments? I'd really like some help on this. |
| I didn't mean to get out of going to church today. I did get up a little late, and was drying my hair with the car vents on the way into town. My stomach had been cramping and churning, and by the time I got there I was wondering if I could sit through a whole service without having to leave. Seeing that the assistant priest was back from vacation, and in fact confirming that with the rector, I told him I wasn't feeling well and was headed back home. He said I looked like maybe I was running a fever, very flushed, and he didn't want to catch it. When I got back into the car and started it, I felt the rush of hot air on my hair-- and face-- and knew why I looked flushed. So that's just a tip I'm passing on in case you want to look sick. No muse awaited me when I got home, but there were other things, like laundry, to do. Isn't there always? Have a happy Sunday! |
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![Merit Badge in Congratulations
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CONGRATS! You've won the over-all winner for March in the [Link To Item #wff] . Well done on your story [Link To Item #1234274]
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