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Where? Who? Why?


I stole this from Nathan Bradsford who stole it from someone else.

It is all the rage in authorland to have reader giveaways of character names. Novelists offer to name characters in upcoming works after the winners of their various contests. So the question today is what book do you wish you could inhabit?

For me, this is an easy one. I have always wished I could live inside Anne McCaffery’s Pern series. Sure, it’s a rustic existence on a rather inhospitable planet in some distant future, but the upside is dragons. Riding dragons with whom you share a telepathic bond and the ability to cross time and space in the flutter of an eyelash.

I can totally envision myself with aloft, battling the vicious thread with flamethrowers astride my golden dragon and being mistress of a weyr. I can also see Rob decked in leather and charging into the fray on a sturdy bronze, Weyrleader respected by all. 

Yep, I am geek like that.

What book would you live in? And don’t be wimpy with just title and author. Tell me who you’d be and what you see yourself doing.

Things


I have two friends with husbands who are ill. Both have been in the hospital recently and I have been following progress and sending notes via Twitter, Facebook and blogs. I remarked to Rob that I hoped this sick husband thing was not contagious which, of course, just invited the jinx right through our front door. There is feng shui in our thoughts and words and I should have taken more care.

The original issue was a sore lower back. Rob’s back is his Achilles’ and he has been seeing the chiropractor and our massage therapist for all summer only to quickly undo any good they were doing with his insistence on death march renovation practices. While I understand the time pressures that the nano-bit of warm weather places on many of the things that need to be done, I still think he pushes himself too far too often. And he knows this.

Issues came to a literal head after the camping trip he and the older girls took over the weekend after Canada Day. He had a sore tailbone that went from red looking to inflamed and bulging. When gutting it out – Rob’s preferred method of dealing with illness – didn’t work, he went to see our elderly Chinese doctor who was horrified enough by what he saw to make Rob sit up and take notice (though not literally, sitting was decidedly difficult by that point).

“It’s a pilondial cyst,” he told me. “And please don’t blog about this.”

And I didn’t. I caught many a Facebook friend unaware when I announced that Rob needed to go into the hospital for what turned out to be minor surgery in the ER (though we had no idea how slight or extensive a procedure he was in for until we got there and the DR on call took a look). I was sorely tempted to blog. Unbelievably amusing moments arise when one is called upon to pack one’s husband’s bum crack on a daily basis. At one point I was peering to get a better look and he said,

“Could you stop with the inspection, please?”

“I’m just trying to get a good look, ” I said. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“That’s because you are a woman. You’ve had a baby. You’ve no dignity left.”

Which is a good point, but I was howling with laughter. It’s not about dignity but that as a woman, I am oddly more comfortable unclothed and being examined than I am dressed up and wondering who thinks I look fat.

Dr. Foo wanted Rob to go to ER on Friday night. Just go straight there and I could bring him anything he might need if he ended up being admitted. Dr. Foo was pretty certain that a major carving and scooping out of sinus cavities at the base of the tailbone was called for and that Rob would be in the hospital for at least a week and be home another month after, dealing with wound care. They do open wound with packing for these types of things.

Rob was quite sober when he called to explain what he’d been told. I was too.

Fortunately, Dee’s sleepover was easily switched from our house to her friend’s, whose mom offered to take Dee for the day Saturday too if needs be – which was awesome considering I only just met her, but some people are wonderful like that.

Rob spent the evening informing his work, his daughters and mother, and schooling me in the basics: insurance and benefits contacts, passwords for important accounts and reminders about where the personal directives and the wills were. 

“Do you want to know what my wishes are? Just in case?”

Yeah, that conversation. One that we’ve been having on and off all year because neither of us wants to end up in the basement storeroom with Shelley’s remains.

“I’m sure I will figure something out,” I said.

“As long as I don’t end up in the basement.”

“Oh, you won’t,” I assured him. “I have a thing about dead husband remains in my basement.”

“You do? I thought you buried Will’s because that’s what he wanted?”

“He did,” I said, “but I also couldn’t stand the idea of having him in the house with me.”

Later he remarked that he thought only two widowed people could have the kinds of conversations that we do sometimes. I am not so sure but maybe.

So now he is upstairs resting. I have some wound care on the agenda for later and I am tired. Worry is exhausting.

Isolde #fridayflash


She sat, silent and aglow with a serenity that burned within her slightly slender frame. Always at an angle with a leg tucked under or crossed over, she was the picture on the wall that never hung straight and seemed more odd when it did. In motion she was swan on the lake despite a crane-like exterior, and though she couldn’t crash traffic at will, she caused whiplash when the moon was fat and aligned properly with certain stars.

They named her Isolde because they loved the way the sound of it blew from the mouth like a warm wind and wrapped her up in a succulence that whispered like a mother to a fractious babe in the middle of the night.

Shhhhh. Hush there and close your great green eyes. Snuggle down into waiting dreams and wake with sly smiles of remembrance.

Isolde perched as high up in the old tree on the side yard as its strength would allow her that day. Nestled but feline and with furrowed expression that frightened even the magpies away and a hiss caught in her throat and leaked through clenched teeth like a kettle on the boil. 

The world below was late August, parched and burnt prematurely brown. Isolde’s bare feet bore fossil like impression of a dry dusty lawn in need of sweeping. Looking up, that was all one could see of her, dirty soles and another pipe cleaner leg to know she was there, but not enough to be sure she was real and not an illusion left behind by a wood sprite to fool foolish mortal eyes.

“Girl, you come down,” Lacie Mae called over her shoulder as she straightened up from the frayed wicker laundry basket with a gnarled handful of white panties too big to belong to her or Isolde.

She didn’t bother to turn around to see if there had been any compliance. The leaves rustling with bird and breeze told her that Isolde was not ready to relinquish her grudging perch. Lacie Mae chuckled and drove slotted wooden pegs over cotton and coated wire before diving like a duck for more undergarments.

“I’m never coming down!”

“Never is a long time,” Lacie replied in a tone as mild as mother’s milk. “Best think on it before you commit.”

Isolde arched out on the thick branch like a cat. Lacie Mae appeared and vanished as the leafy arms of the tree swayed with increased wind and under her weight. 

“Isolde still pouting up the old elm?” She heard a male voice and her upper lip curdled as she straddled the limb, bark digging into her smooth bare inner thighs. She couldn’t see him but for his wide backside and swollen fingers half stuck in his back pockets, thumbs splayed on his lower back like a woman with child.

“She can hear you fine, you know,” Lacie said, stabbing the last crotch stained pair of underdrawers to the line.

“Well, she’s going to service and I don’t care what she thinks about it.”

The legs waddled toward the back porch. Hinges squealed like pigs and wood jarred wood as Lacie’s reply followed like a lazy dog,

“Don’t tell me. Tell her.”

But there was no answer and Lacie Mae turned at last to face the tree.

“See what trouble you got me in?”

Isolde grabbed hold of the branch and swung down her feet flapping like a blind man’s cane for the nearest purchase. Found, she reached for the trunk to steady herself as she dropped to the lower branch. From there Isolde was visible to the seeing world and she met Lacie Mae’s sprawling white grin with her own gapped tooth one.

“Well fine then. But I ain’t dressing.”

Lacie Mae turned back and picked up the empty basket, bracing if against one hip she made for the screened porch.

“Think on it a bit ‘fore you commit.” Was all she had to say.