CarlHoliday

It has just been announced that winter in 2010 will occur in Vancouver, B.C. This will certainly solve a lot of weather related problems elsewhere.

And the problem is? White Lexus? Blond woman? Cell phone? Blinker flashing? You definitely need to get around more.

Although I'm not quite ready for it, the new story is coming up out of the depths of my imagination. Sci-Fi this time. In the far distant future on a planet far, far away. People live long lives due to nanotechnology's ability to continuously keep their bodies vibrant and viable. The protagonist, Martello Conger, dreams of living long enough to become King of the Planet even though he is seventy-third in line and realistically has little hope of achieving that august title. Barring some unfortunate accident that prevents his nanos from repairing his body, like vaporization or surreptious removal of his nanos, he figures he'll have to live to at least 600, which even to him is a long, long time. Robots do most of the dirty work. Bots are inherently nonconfrontational, but sometimes it seems they're doing a lot of things outside their programming and it's not unknown for a bot to reprogram itself for it's own purposes. Society is structured by task. The Royals own the large estates where all of the food is grown. The Guildsmen (Artisans, Tradesmen, Merchants, and Scholars) live in the cities and towns and pledge their fielty to the local Royal, or in some cases to a more powerful Royal in another region. The Enchanters weave various magic spells, communicate with the gods, provide enticement and sexual pleasure, and are the only people on the planet with the knowledge of how nanos work. Enchanters are the only people on the planet who can legally kill another person for cause, such as a capital crime or the desire of a person who feels they have lived too long. Martello who graduated from university three years earlier has just come out of a three year nano induced coma that replaced two legs and an arm that were severed in an accident. He is leaving his family for a rite of passage trek across his continent, a distance of over twenty thousand kilometers. In all likelihood he'll never come home again, either by finding property he can develop for his estate, being captured and sold into slavery on another planet, or being captured and killed by robbers, rogue bots, or some wild animal that's come down from the less populated polar regions. As I seen it, there are many hazards on this long walk, but there are also many opportunities for unimagined pleasures. It sounds like a fun, light story with just enough variety to keep it going until Martello either dies or finds someone to share his future.

I have 2007 (bought it at Best Buy when I bought the new laptop), but I still save all my files as Word 97-2003 documents to ensure Word doesn't clog up the works with a bunch of irrelevant code. It's those .docx files that mess it up. When sending files to my editor I just hit F12 to bring up the Save As menu and select Word 97-2003.

I am so not ready for today's forecasted high temperature. On the other hand, I am enjoying the reading on the bathroom scale every morning after gallons and gallons of sweat have seeped out of my body overnight. This is the kind of weight loss program a couch potato loves, except I'm not a couch potato. I have a recliner. A Lazy Boy at that. The good thing about the hot weather is having a bit of an incentive to work on The Artists. It looks like this story will definitely end at Chapter 20. Once you read Chapter 19, which I hope will be out sometime in August, I'm sure you'll understand. Yesterday I read the last two and a half chapters of Olive Kitteridge, this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. It's a fairly easy read and I remember coming across only one "literary" word, i.e., those words that never occur in common usage but tend to show up in literary work if only to justify all those years it took to get that MFA. This one was asseverate. This novel is a collection of short stories where Olive Kitteridge appears in each as either protagonist, antagonist, a secondary character, or in a few cases simply mentioned. There's a study guide at the end of the book and one of the questions was: Did you like Olive? I said No. It also asked if Olive reminded me of someone. I said my mother. If you're interested in reading about a domineering, opinionated, unforgiving bitch, I recommend Olive Kitteridge. Last night I started God's Little Acre, a book which surprisingly I have never read. I haven't read Tobacco Road, either, and will probably read that next. The only bad thing about both of these books is that they'll probably remind me too much of my in-laws. The wife tells stories about being raised in rural Arkansas down in the delta lands around Dumas, and later in Lincoln County when her father started hauling pulp wood with his brother, and they were poor. They built their first house using lumber from a barn that was destroyed in a tornado. The kids went to the dump quite often to find useful things. When you're really poor, the dump becomes your department store. Damn it's hot and it's not even noon.

We don't do hot here worth a damn. Drizzly rain yes, but not heat. As the song goes, "we're having a heat wave." And not liking it one bit. For the record, our friends at NOAA have posted Excessive Heat and Air Stagnation Warnings. Not good. Plus, humidity is going up. Or, like I enjoy saying, hum-a-ditty, like, "we're having a heat wave." Run that one through your brain a couple times and you, too, will be humin-a-ditty. Over and over and over and over. Can't get those things out of your head. Especially that one. Not like "Hot town summer in the city." No, "we're having a heat wave" is much nastier. And, can't hum "Hot town summer in the city" anyway cause this is the burbs bub, not even close to the city, a big one anyway. There's Tacoma up the road, but it doesn't even come close the the words in that song. Anyway, I kind of wish we could get out of here this week. Maybe take a road trip down to Mojave, CA, and take in some real heat, 'cause it ain't good up here with this heat wave. "We're having a heat wave . . ."

(S)he was probably trying to save gas by not having to step on it after turning into traffic. Nothing worse than having someone pull out in front of you and then slow down to thirty or less.

The knife edge in the middle has a keen edge.

H A P P Y . . . . B I R T H D A Y ! ! !

For the past month or so I've been reading Blake Bailey's biography of John Cheever. Rather I should say up until this morning I've been reading this bio. It's one thing to suffer from depression and quite another thing to read about someone who not only was exceedingly depressed, but was drunk most of the time. I've done the drunk most of the time bit and it wasn't fun reading about the fifths of gin and whiskey Cheever was downing on a daily basis. So why start? Well, I didn't know he was an alcholic. I did know his children found out after he died that he was proud of the fact he'd never taken it up the ass. Throughout his life he was in constant fear his family would find out he was a bisexual and he thought that fear was one of the reasons he drank. I suppose I was looking for more than what was there. I certainly didn't expect to find a very depressed man who drank himself into an early death, even though he was a terrific writer. But after so much depression I had to put the book on the shelf and find something else. I bought the huge Stories of John Cheever. It will replace the bio on the breakfast table. I also picked up this year's Pulitzer winner, Olive Kitteridge, for the nightstand and 180 More: Estraordinary Poems for Every Day for the recliner in my office. I'm trying to find something to lift me up a little more and thought maybe poetry might do it.

I had a Buick Century, but it drove like a boat. I do look forward to when I'm over 70, or better yet 75, and will be able to get another Buick and drive exceedingly slow, especially at stop lights and on ramps. What I'm looking forward to most, though, is being totally confused at fourway stops then, just when all the other cars are totally pissed, suddenly bolting through.

Okay, I seem to be getting over whatever it was that had me down. It's not that happy days are here again, but the sun is shining and I'm looking forward. I've returned to working on The Artists. This gives me two long stories to write, learning Spanish, learning my digital camera, forcing myself to read poetry, and coping with near constant pain in my knee. I might even tackle an upcoming Anthology. I did not get a new knee. I am not old enough. Replacement knees only last 15 to 20 years, so you have to be really, really, really bad or at least 65 years old to get a replacement. Other news: The wife went blind in April because of her diabetes. They operated on the right eye (which was full of blood), doing a vitrectomy and cataract removal. The left eye is a goner due to pre-existing underdevelopment worsened by diabetic retinopathy. She goes to the optometrist this morning to get her new prescription for the right eye. Hopefully, she'll be seeing okie-dokie in a couple weeks. More other news: Did you see the recent news about depression now being recognized as being an increased risk for heart disease? All this time I was worried about suicide when I should have been doing all I could to lessen my overall chances by exercising more, watching my diet, and reducing stress. Of course, doing nothing could be seen as a long term method of eventual suicide, but that takes all the fun out of offing yourself with spur of the moment stupidity.

some tequilas are good . . . . a few are very, very good nothing good to say about mescal.

Hatch Mesa, east of Green River, UT Went to Orthopedics to discuss relapse of knee problem with PA-C. Offered three options: deal with it as I have been, which is not an option because I need a good knee to drive; get a shot of cortisone into the joint, which is not an option because this is only a temporary cure and the problem will come back; or, get a new knee. I need a good knee to do my chosen line of work. It takes about a month for the process to go from deciding to do and getting it done. Then it takes quite a bit of time to get back up to speed. Maybe the recession will be over by then.

The Three Gossips in Arches National Park, UT (from our knee pain shortened road trip) Still trying to get my life back in order. I've started working on a short story about an old man dying in a nursing home; or, he may already be dead and just hasn't realized it. It's more of an exercise to keep me writing than a real writing project. Then, again, maybe it will work out to be something. My knee is back to the way it was before surgery. Going to Ortho tomorrow to talk about what needs to be done. Psychologically I seem to be doing just dandy. Buproprion for depression and Divalproex for bi-polar seems to be just the right combination to keep me on an even keel. I know I should try to refocus on getting The Artists back online, but I seem to be losing interest in that project entirely.

She was my great-great-grandmother. She came into the marriage with children having lost her first husband in the California Gold Rush; she bore a few more. There were two tintypes; one of my great-great-grandfather and one of her. She looks very dark, too dark to have been out in the sun too long. Her features are very Native American. There is one family story that says she was half Indian. My grandfather said she was born in Norfolk, Virginia, but he never acknowledged her as being half Indian. He never saw her before she died, so never knew. Her tintype is missing. Her existence never bothered me until now when one of my cousins asked to see my mother's photo album for additions to the family archive. She asked if I had the tintype for "the old squaw." She would've been born in Virginia of the early 19th Century; a time when being Indian wasn't good. According to one report I read on the web, Virginians weren't quite certain what to do with the Indians living among them. They were definitely not white, but neither were they black. They just didn't fit into the social scheme. Another report said that full-blooded Indians not on reservations were practically nonexistent by the early 19th Century, so her being half-Indian comes into question. And, yet, she bothers me almost daily. There is a story in all that mess and I've been trying to work out the pieces.

I am trying very hard not to be overly depressed about this because we are in Flagstaff, AZ, and that's a long way from home. Day before yesterday I drove from Moab, UT, to Moriarty, NM, 432 miles which isn't all that far considering we stopped a few times to stretch the legs, but it was no use. The knee I had surgery on isn't as well as I thought. In fact, it's almost back to being a bad knee. Yesterday we drove from Moriarty to Flagstaff, with a side trip through Petrified Forest NP (lots of photos) and Meteor Crater (didn't pay $15 per per to see hole in ground I saw on "Nova" a couple years ago). Today we were going to go up to Tuba City or down to Jerome, but I think we're going to head toward the next stop toward home. Road trips with bad knees are a definite pain and, while the oxycodone makes me feel okie-dokie, I'd rather not have to use it while I'm supposed to be on vacation. I think we'll go to Kingman today. There's a long stretch of Old Route 66 through Peach Springs I might take and maybe stop at the Grand Canyon Caverns, too. Maybe we'll just hang around Flagstaff until the oxycodone wears off and I can drive again.

The real side of me has set up an account on Facebook and has been looking for friends and acquaintances, but since I have few friends or acquaintances I've been forced to add relatives to the mix. So far I've found, in order of discovery, a nephew, a niece, and a cousin. There is a blog friend who sent one of my aliases a note to join, but though I responded, she hasn't acknowledged the request to hook up. This morning my cousin (there are six of us, a year apart) sent me an email to catch up on old news. We're supposed to leave on our road trip sometime this week even though it is supposed to snow all day today. Hopefully, that snow won't be going in our direction though we do have a few mountains to cross between here and there. Tentatively, we'll be heading for Arches National Park, Battleship Texas, Old River Control project, maybe the Natchez Trace, definitely a few relatives in Arkansas, the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, and Descanso Gardens. There'll be lots of stops between and lots of photos to add to my growing collection at Flickr! I'm looking for a nice restful time driving nearly 6,000 miles between here, there, and back.

I've kind of known about Diabetic Retinopathy for years as a former co-worker's brother had juvenile diabetese and was going through it as a young adult. Yesterday I took the wife (Type II Diabetes for 18 years) to see an ophthamalogist because her optometrist said there'd been a change in her left eye. After the doctor examined my wife and escorted her to the laser room to have her weak capillaries photocoagulated, he gave me a booklet, "Understanding Diabetic Retinopathy." The alarms went off with a resounding TMI! TMI! TMI! The bad thing about all of this is that I don't think the wife has a full understanding of what this could eventually lead to. She acts oblivious to any dire outcome. The other bad thing about this is I was unaware things were getting this bad. She's been going to the optometrist for years and the results of the exams are on her record, but the wife has consistently said everything was okie-dokie. According to the ophthamalogist, there's been a steady, noticeable decline for years. Denial is not a cure.

When I went to the shrink last Wednesday I told him about being super irritable to the point where people were noticing. Hell, I was noticed the change first. Not only was I irritable, I was downright dangerous. The possibility of road rage incidents was coming back with a vengence. Anger management was out the window. We discussed the situation and he said the irritability was probably due to the Zoloft working too well and throwing me over to the manic side of my mood stabilizer which has been working just dandy. He said that happened a lot with some antidepressants and while there were a lot of options, maybe we should cut my dosage in half before jumping to a different medicine. He said he knew what Zoloft did and was reluctant to put me through a new course of monitoring side effects. And, so, Monday night it hits me. I've been through this enough to know. There's no easing into an altered state. With me it's simply BANG, you're dead! We were out to dinner and the situation wasn't going too well -- The waiter didn't listen to the wife, who tends to chatter too much, and messed up her order; and, in doing so, forgot to give me some extra condiments. Since I'm not one to bring fault to a situation, I let it ride, all the while letting the waiter's ineptitude simmer inside -- and before I knew I went from okie-dokie to depressed. The next morning (yesterday) I was still depressed and sinking lower, so I called the clinic and told the nurse what happened. "Are you suicidal?" "No." "Okay, I'll tell the doctor. We should get back to you within 24 hours." I guess it was a good thing I rarely get suicidal because 24 hours is a long time to wait for someone to solve a problem. Unable to find solace, I put myself into doing things. In other words, I worked out of the depression. An interesting outcome of the situation was that I was able to write a little once I made the decision not to be depressed. It wasn't much, maybe a sentence or two, but it was tapping into the creative and pulling out a string of words that fit the puzzle. The nurse called back just before the clinic closed. She said my shrink wanted me to go back to a full dose of Zoloft and we'd talk about the situation the next time we met. As far as I'm concerned we already had that conversation. 50 mg of Zoloft puts me over the bar and I become dangerous to myself and others. 25 mg keeps me in familiar territory, it might be sad territory, but at least it's safe. The choice was simple. I still didn't feel all that well, but at least I'm not mad for the silliest reasons.

Well, our son isn't going on vacation with us. He's just quick smoking, again, so his nerves are just about shot and he doesn't want to put up with his mother's stupidity and non sequiturs for two weeks. The good thing is we get to go where we want to and don't have to go his way. We went out to his place on Saturday and now I took a few shots of Mount Stickney, which he can see from his driveway. I'm still getting used to the camera and hopefully the shots will get better. Haven't written anything since Friday. Haven't felt like it. No, I've felt like it, but haven't had the interest.

I thought of doing a blog entry, but that's too easy. I thought of working on the stories I'm not working on, but wasn't too interested in going there. I thought of what? So, without anything to do, I joined Facebook with the sole purpose of finding a few friends from the past. I guess I'm the only one of my circle that's thought of that. No one. Nada. Out of my high school class, there was one, possibly two, but no one else. I did find out that the friends I had have really common names on Facebook, so there are pages and pages of people I might know, except I don't. You have to be really pathetic not to have any friends. Of course, I've always shunned friendships. Introverts don't like company. Even here at GA I don't have any friends, but that's not why I'm here anyway. So, I guess it's either back to bed or pull up one of the stories should be working on and get busy.

Renting a motor home didn't work out because of tow weight limits and Bonita being a nonhuman species, which seems to bother some people, why I don't know. We're renting a Suburban or Expedition, instead. Our son and I will drive, leaving the wife and Bonita to do whatever it is they do while riding in a vehicle. I know the wife usually falls asleep a few moments after drive is engaged, which is one of the reasons she won't be behind the wheel, and Bonita quites lays in her carrier thinking tiny, little nonhuman species thoughts, patiently waiting for the next stop where she'll be able to run her nose across some vary strange odors. Primarily, this will be a photo shoot expedition into the wilds of the central U.S. where I hope the son will be able to encounter various native peoples such as Hoosiers, Okies, Arkies, and maybe an authentic cowboy or two. We're definitely not going to be driving between here and Salt Lake as the son seems to have developed a strong aversion to all things Utahan. Frankly, I could care less to the point where I was originally planning on stopping in Moab to take some pictures of various results of erosion on the native red sandstone. Unable to pursue a more direct route will require some careful planning weatherwise considering March isn't the best time to be venturing across the Rockies or wandering down the Great Plains. There is a strong possibility we may be forced to head due south to the Big CA, then east across the northern edge of the Sonoran Desert. There are things to see that way, but, having been around the U.S. a bit, there's just something about coming up atop a rise in Kansas and seeing absolutely nothing for miles around. Travelers talk about central Australia being the Big Empty, but obviously they haven't toured Kansas. Plus, there are all those places where Laura Ingalls Wilder slept. That's a tour in itself. How ever we get there, our primary goal will be to spend as much time as possible around Lincoln County, Arkansas, where most of the wife's people live. Hopefully, the son will be fortunate to see some trashy trailer parks, a few overly ardent Baptists, and quite possibly one or two down-and-out pulpwood haulers, an occupation originally pursued by the family's progenitor after an abortive attempt at sharecropping.

Something weird is happening. The wife got her hearing aids on Monday and her left ear can literally hear a pin drop, which is driving her batty because there are a whole lot more sounds out there louder than a pin clattering onto carpet. She'll be calling Miracle Ear this morning. Last night I got the screwy idea of renting a motor home and heading down to Arkansas to visit the wife's family. I asked what she thought of the idea of asking our son to go along and maybe allowing us to tow his Cavalier. I damned near ran off the road when she said that was a dandy idea. In the past the wife and our son have gotten along about as well as two spoiled brats with only one Snickers bar between them. When we got home I called our son and broached the idea with him. He thought it was a dandy idea, too, especially when I suggested we could stop along the way at various and sundry attractions to take pictures with our Rebel Xsi's. (He bought his first, but I bought a $700 macro lens and he didn't. I keep thinking of that itty-bitty purple flower I saw one early spring afternoon six or seven years ago along the St. Francis River in Missouri.) So, today I have to find an RV to rent that will allow us to take Bonita and tow his Cavalier.

I'm kinda getting used to this night stuff, even if I end up sleeping during the day. Of course if I stay up all day, I sleep most of the night. I've been working very hard on getting up before seven in the morning so that I can take the mood stabilizer doses twelve hours apart, as they're supposed to be. So far, that's working. Tonight I actually worked on Chapter 18 doing a bit on Six. Didn't write much, but at least I wrote something. It has been too long since I've posted anything on this story, but to be honest it's probably going to be awhile before the next post. I've been checking on the side effects of Zoloft and maybe this isn't going to be the magic bullet. I can deal with the sexual issues since I don't have a sexual partner right now, but I've noticed my vision seems a little off, sort of blurry and last night it was like everything had been dimmed a notch. On Monday I was super bitchy, down right irritable. As far as cutting out the depression it's okay; and, I'm losing weight, so some side effects are actually good. Also, I've begun to think maybe I might want to go off antidepressants. I'm tired mostly of feeling shitty from the side effects. The mood stabilizer seems to be doing a good job of keeping me at "just okay." I can deal with that. It's the crap I have to put up with antidepressants that's getting me down and I think it's having an effect on my writing, which isn't good as far as I'm concerned. Of course, this will take quite a bit of concentration to pull off. The alternative is giving in to spending the rest of my life feeling miserable in order to be not depressed. Maybe a little depression isn't so bad. Or, maybe the shrink has some alternative med available; you know, something drastic like ECT. Oh, to go away to a happy place for awhile and not have to worry about anything. I wonder if the wife could step up to the plate and take care of me and everything else? No, I don't think so. I guess I'm damned unless I can figure out a way to cut the meds and be happy too. Sounds like an interesting project.