Tired and sore today, but happy. Two days ago I celebrated being up in good shape by going to a memorial service for my sister's stepmother-in-law and visiting some with her gathered children. The next day all of us went to Dad's house and cleared some more land. Best beloved and I cleared a lot around the cement fish pond. When had the grapevine trellis collapsed? I hadn't noticed because of all the blackberry vines. Today I hope to dig up all the compost covering the pond and concrete walks made by the birds and sunflower seed hulls over a number of years. Pulling all the vines growing in that was a chore and a half. Dad watches us do the work he can no longer do and pets our dogs. He still hates that we are Christians and, much worse, Republicans, but maybe he is coming to peace with it. It is amazing how willing to work hard my sister's girls are. I am jealous that she has all these girls (six living) to play World of Warcraft with to talk with and to go to coffeeshops with. I have one that can only talk like a wookie and one that would not enjoy going to very many places with me. I had so much fun with my mother, going to art shows and sewing expos and going on long drives to take the wookie to a center to give us a week's respite and gardens and comparing notes on books etc, that I had hoped to have such a relationship with my daughter. Ah, well. God knows.
I was able to talk to my sister's youngest about why eye gaze hurts for her is because for her and me, eye gaze stimulates the amygdala in the brain instead of the limbic system as it does in most people. I explained how I practiced eye gaze until I had finally desensitized and she would need to do so also or people would not trust her.
Anyway, it was a good day of work, and altho I got tired, I did not get shuddery like I did last month when I pruned for a few hours and notched my lopper on Dad's wires.
Then we went to Starbucks and discussed Shatterworld with my sister and two of her daughters. One of them could not finish the third book because it was too depressing. More talk, and ok, ok, I'll write an epilogue, but it won't be my husband's epilogue. And Ralph in a morning consult at Sheri's restaurant had already persuaded me that an epilogue was required. So, I haven't finished writing Shatterworld after all, grumble, grumble. I am also truly distressed at how many people say that my husband's additions are useful. Glower. He says he is the editor and publisher, so he has the right. Glower deeper. He promises he will not mess with the books I am writing for my oldest son's universe. Good. And oh, I am adding some more conversation of Elder Chin in the closet, but again, it won't be my husband's sermon. The niece who couldn't finish the book will try again.

I need to be fairer to my husband. He took the books that I had written fifteen years ago and that had been lost when the computer died, and collated the different versions on paper and retyped all of them for a Christmas present to me. Then he organized a number of critique group meetings and collated all the comments into one document. Then he plans to finance the self-publishing of said books.    That is love.   If he had not done that, Shatterworld would still be sitting in boxes in the basement.
We found out the last infection is by an antibiotic-resistant bacterium. Since the lab called my husband (I am too deaf to talk on the phone anymore) I don't know the name of the little bugger, but I would not be surprised to find out that it is a pseudomonas, which is what I caught in Rwanda a little over a year ago. So I started a new medicine, and for the first time in a few months, my sinuses have stopped draining and I feel like I might be alive after all.
Yesterday I finished the first version of a prologue to Killing The Siij. Jay of the Outrageous Fiction critique group suggested I do that instead of a lot of flashbacks. Bowmark's version of the events were covered in The Scarred King. Since I want all the novels set in Joshua's universe to be stand alone novels, it suddenly made a lot of sense to show the event where Bowmark and Risli crossed from her perspective. Yes! And I wrote half a chapter about the young garloon just before he went on a seek. He shall gain a name on the seek. What shall I call him? Writing this novel is a lot of fun, and I'm glad a found a critique group that is helpful after the one I belonged to for over a decade dissolved because of moves and jobs.

I am so tired of being constantly sick. I get one infection cleared up, and one someplace else shows up. On the other hand, I am feeling good about getting some good writing in on the novel Killing The Siij. I need to be working some more on proofreading the Trilogy and addressing the issues various people have brought up. And my husband keeps pressuring me to keep in his additions because they are so useful. And then there's the epilogue he wrote without consulting me at all. Well, he's a sweetheart and some of his ideas are good, but I still need to write in the additions the way I would and not the way he would. If I were to write an epilogue to the Trilogy, it wouldn't follow his history at all at all. He thinks the books are so important that he must contribute. And he's a teacher. And he likes to preach. I hate preaching in books, or so I think until my husband and others point out where I have preaching in the story. I thought that was dialogue when I do it.
Anyway, he wants this to be a collaboration; I want him to leave me alone. And then he brings up that if he hadn't typed the books for me, they would still be sitting in boxes and would never be published. Well, is that fair I ask you? What do facts have to do with anything? And... what I'm really sick of is being sick and being unable to accomplish much in a day.

Finished Darwinian Fairytales, Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity, and Other Fables of Evolution by David Stove.   Huh. The man believes in evolution, but he does not believe in natural selection, or scarcely anything said by Darwin, his followers, and Dawkins and his followers. He points out the errors with closely reasoned arguments.
Odder by Dean Koontz: a fun, engaging read if you don't mind some murder and mayhem. The short and colorful disquisition of Indians and gambling casino followed by an extended metaphor was worth the price of admission.
I'm in Hebrews now. Forgot to mention I read a number of magazines such as WORLD magazine, Christianity Today, Fine Gardening, Fine Sewing, Cloth Paper and Scissors. Why should you care? I dunno.

And I forgot to mention that our houseguest/boarder is in the hospital again for a week. He's 84, and very sick. He's also a delightful man, and an elder in our church. I'm beginning to wonder how much longer we are going to have him. I'm always sad when he goes to the hospital. He's running the race well, as is his wife in adult care. But, you know, that last bit is such an uphill climb.

A few more books

I finished Diabetes Type 2 & What To Do by Valentine and Toohey and this know-it-all learned a few things such as why I am hungry all the time and why losing weight is such a cumbrous process.
Connected   24 Hours In The Global Economy by Daniel Altman: Very interesting. Will I be able to retain the information I learned. Not likely. I don't have that kind of brain. So what kind of brain do I have? I always scored in the 99th and 98th percentiles of the Iowa basic skills test. So what? The tests are good predictors of how well you will take tests. They don't measure social smarts or musical smarts or body smarts or character traits such as perseverance or future state of health etc. Over the years I have managed to lengthen my three number short term memory to four numbers. Most people have a seven number short term memory. God made me the way he made me for His purposes, so I can't complain, but I sure wouldn't mind being given some social smarts. I just hurt my daughter-in-law again by being oblivious to nuances of things I say. I apologize, but I know I'll do it again sometime soon. Sigh. I hate hurting people.  Back to the original point. I don't understand things at the corporate and governmental level. I can cope with one on one most times. Groups are hopeless for me. After we leave a group meeting, my husband needs to explain what happened.
And I read some book about 20th century design that taught me nothing. I preferred From Your House To Bauhous.
Oh, and The Other by David Guterson: I love his elegant writing. I am about the same age as he and lived in Seattle for six years, from Ballard to the University District and back to Ballard again. So even though I did not care for a single character of his, I enjoyed going to all the places he mentioned and remembering the songs and events of that time, the 70s in the Pacific Northwest.
I am still working on Darwinian Fairytales which started out with arguments that sometimes seemed unfair and interesting but beside the point. Finally I realized that he was making a different point than I had anticipated. He was going after Malthus as interpreted by Darwinism. Now I'm in the part where the author is going after Dawkins and The Selfish Gene. I remember laughing all through The Selfish Gene, and I am enjoying reading someone who can explain why I was laughing a lot better than I can.

Amazing What an Earache can do

I had an earache for several weeks that finally quit and transferred to the other side. I let it go thinking it might go away too. Instead it got too painful for me to chew and my sinuses never stopped draining and I felt sick. Went into a clinic and feel much much better today except I still can't chew hard, so how am I supposed to eat all my veggies? What happens if you blend celery? I'm about to find out. The sun is coming out so I think I'll go out and throw around some fertilizer.

I read The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind, Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwambe and Bryan Mealer.   How do I get this into the hands of everybody in North America and force them to read it!  What a story!!!!!!!!!  Favorite quote from the book: "I try, and I make it."  His story about how a three shelf library became this poor and starving boy's university is exactly why I want to build libraries in Africa.

Finished Bitter Scent by Michael Bar-Zohar.  Yi, yi ,yi, how amazing how many Nazis still run the world. Reading about corporations merges and splits and boycotts reminded me of how I wanted to boycott Monsanto, a truly evil company. So I went online to find out what companies where owned by Monsanto but not carrying that name so that I could carry out a comprehensive boycott. Whew. Mergers and splits and mergers and splits so that at the end of the shell game, if I understood correctly, Monsanto stood alone as a company that only handled the lawsuits of previous incarnations.  Sheeee.......  Now, I love genetic engineering of crops, but I hate companies that sue farmers that live downwind from engineered crops and receive pollen they did not even want for their crops.  And I can't help but wonder if producing corn that kills caterpillars is why I can't find butterflies anywhere in this town, let alone my butterfly friendly yard. And how do the scientists that developed the killer seed technology sleep at night?

A few more thoughts

I finished reading "a long way gone  Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" by Ishmael Beah: Ohhh God, Ohhh God, Ohhh God.

I had forgotten what I wanted to add to West Oversea. I so much admire the missionaries who dared to go to my ancestors in Scotland and England. And considering how often the Vikings "visited" England, there might be some Viking or Danish blood in me as well. The murder rate was horrendous. The religion was horrendous. The people enjoyed slaughtering foreigners. Thank You, Jesus, for the people who went in Your Name to my people.
On one of the New Year Celebrations in Rwanda I was asked to speak, and so I told the people there were Christians in Africa long before there were Christians in the British Isles and how glad I was for the missionaries. I explained just how dark it got in England and how desperate the people became for light. They worshiped mistletoe and oak trees and burned people in wicker baskets. On New Years the king would have sex with a white horse in front of everybody. The people built huge bonfires and prayed for light. And I read the verse about the people in darkness who have seen a great light. And I thanked God for Jesus who is the great Light in our lives.

I finished On Combat: there is a book to go on the reference shelf.

Oh, and we think we found out where Frank's patients went. It seems the receptionist was not calling the patients about six-month appts. After Frank held a staff meeting and said the receptionist was the first person he would need to lay off, suddenly his days were full again.

And speaking of Frank, my best beloved, he and one of the Chinese Crested dogs had irreconcilable differences and so little Kip went to the Humane Society. I'll bet he wasn't there for ten minutes before he was picked up. If he went to a household without a man in it, I think he'll do fine. So now we have the Crested mix who looks like a muppet, and the house is quieter and less tense.

I pruned the plum tree to a height where I can reach the fruit and coated all the stubs with a no-sprout chemical. We'll see if it works. Prunus trees love to watersprout. I brought in some of the branches to force, and they are blooming beautifully.

Bright Day

A cool and sunny day meant I could go out and do a batch of pruning.

Frank and I have been trading illnesses for a few weeks now and I've been muzzy headed and bereft of any accomplishments. I see that developing the habit of blogging will be difficult. I would much rather add witty comments on other people's blogs.

For Lent, I am giving up reading science-fiction, except of course for the editing of my stuff.

Frank started to read Accedia and Me, and he had a completely different take from me. He is not impressed with the desert fathers and the exploration of their minds and mental sins. He says their main sin was going off to be by themselves. They should have lost themselves in service to others instead of wondering why they didn't feel like praying anymore.

What I've read the last few weeks while laying in bed feeling accedic:

Isaac Asimov presents The Great SF Stories 17 (1955)  So, that the year Clarke's The Star came out.
The Starbridge by A.C. Crispin    Aliens! Sex! What's not to like? Well, as I have said earlier, I like sex, but not in my reading or in my movie viewing.
Her Majesty's Wizard by Christopher Stasheff: the first in the series. His writing got better.
Hunted by James Alan Gardner: Aliens! I liked it.
Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz: Oh I did laugh. Bizarre and hilarious.
West Overseas by Lars Walker: I enjoyed it and learned how to pronounce some Norwegian words.
Dinotopia Lost by Alan Dean Foster: couldn't finish. Charming idea but maybe I was just too sick to get into it.
Arana's Visitor by Julie Rollins: I think this would be a good book for a junior high group to read and discuss.
What are the Chances? by Bart Holland: A fun review of odds and statistics.
The Hottest Urban Legends by Jan Brunvand: good grief, the stories we tell each other.
When The Sky Fell by Mike Lynch and Brandon Barr: If you are into military sf and enjoy every single detail of how things happen, this is the book for you. This was not the book for me. I like biology and medical details, not machinery so much. But one detail did bother me a lot: how do ships "list" in space? I have a brother-in-law who should like this book. He has large photographs of airplanes, jets on his wall. Now why I dislike photos of jets and like photos of bridges puzzles me. They are both highly engineered works of man to get people from one place to another. So why...
Project ULF by Stuart Clark: I don't know why a microbiologist who should know better would have his protagonists capture specimens for zoos in the most amateurish way possible. There's the broken-hearted male and the beautiful girl and aaargh! I just don't like thrillers. So why do I like the thrillers by Dean Koontz who does the same stuff other thriller writers do? I dunno.

I'm almost through On Combat which is fascinating. I'm working my way through The Book Of Absolutes. The social part was tough. The physics part is much easier. I'm going to see if I have the stamina to read The Book Of Absolutes into an MP3 so my philosopher son can hear it while he is working on his sculptures.