First Storm of The Year

I am so grateful fall and winter are finally here! You would be too if you didn't have a working air conditioning unit in your car! It's un-freaking-believable to have the season nip at my nose and to come in dripping wet from rain instead of sweat. We are so abundantly blessed! Okay, maybe it's just me. The rain is playing havoc with Mom's arthritis, she doesn't want to come out from under the heating blanket.


I think of how desperately the Bay Area and parts south need the rain, and how lucky we are to have it. It seems though every blessing is a double edged sword. If too much rain falls in the fire ravaged areas then it will cause ashy mud slides, and in some towns where the elected people didn't keep their word, will be underwater if the storm is as ferocious as the weatherman promised. For now though, I'm not going to think of the mud, the ash or the floating towns. I'm just going to enjoy the sound of the rain as it dances on the pavement to the song of wind in the rose bushes outside my window.

Writers Block, Thy Name Is Jealousy

I just finished reading The Host last night. I was too wiped from the Gartner Gala for Mom's 80th and about all I was good for was reading or sleeping. So, I read. I had been reading this on the treadmill at the gym, and it actually got me going to the gym for a while.

I love the book, but I also hate the book. I love it because it is a really good story, I hate it because it made me cry. I don't cry, as a general rule. It's too emotionally exhausting. So, I find other ways to express myself. I loved it because it had a happy ending, I hated it because it's made me feel like such a slouch with my writing. I can't get my family to read the book that I have written, how can I get strangers to read it. My friends like it, so that's somewhat consoling, but I still depend on my family for validation.

I know, I know, being jealous isn't a good thing to be, it's counter-productive, I'm not going to get anything really accomplished. I'm not going to be a Stephanie Meyer, I'm not going to be a Victor(ia) Hugo, or even a Jane Austen. We already have them, I just need to be me. But I want to make people cry, I want to publish a book that makes people sit and spend the whole day reading until they get to the end, just because they know they can't sleep unless they know the end. I want to be like that.

I'm whining, I know I'm whining. I need to go to the gym, I'm reading Harry Potter again, it's a simple book to read on the treadmill. Before The Host I read His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman, which is the title of the trilogy of The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. All very good books. None of them made me cry, none of them made me wish I was *that* good. I would like to have the imagination to create the world the Phillip Pullman created, I don't think I'm wired towards fantasy. Yes, The Host is fantasy but it's more of a psychological romance, sacrifice and so on.

One of the things that I really admire of Stephanie Meyers is her willingness to stick to standards in her stories. When I say "stick to standards" I mean the LDS standards that she lives. There is some language, but no F-bombs, no degrading behavior human towards human, even though they didn't like the alien, they didn't treat her well at first but some were willing to look past it and that's where the story really takes off. I need to be true to myself, and believe that I have talent, that I am a good writer that people will read me like I read others. At least have hope to faith until faith becomes knowledge......

Fear and Loathing in Silicon Valley

First my desktop dies, then my car dies. I get my car out of the shop at a $700+ ransom and using my Internet-less laptop, and borrowing other laptops to get other things done beyond the walls of my temporary prison. Then, in a fit of rushed anxiety the housing of my thumb drive came off. One would think it wouldn't be too bad of a mishap, in light of my computer being down, my car being broken, oh, and did I mention I was running late to my appointment with the Cannery so I could fulfill my calling as home storage guru for the ward? But that one particular thumb drive had my current working document of my novel "Hearts of the Mothers". I had just concluded I had over 2/3rds finished. I tried to quickly save it to my laptop desktop but it wouldn't and it completely killed the application. The only soft copy that I had was the twenty six pages I started with in January. It would be okay if I hadn't written over 300 pages since then. I was dying inside.

I refused to curl up on the floor in a fetal position and give up though. I tried to put the housing back on but that didn't work, and I also knew that handling the actual components of the drive I ran the risk of sending some sort of static shock to them so I plugged it back into the laptop I was using and then my 4 gig thumb drive I've been meaning to update everything to and quickly moved all the files over. But when I tried to call the file up the computer wouldn't work. Even without the knowledge that my work was saved I went to the cannery, printed up my backup work there and then came home and took a sleeping pill and prayed that all will be well.

All is well. I was able to pull the actual 321 page document up and save it to my desktop on my laptop, saved it to the desktop of my sisters laptop and I will save it to this desktop of Patrick's laptop. I'm never EVER going to loose that much work again. I can't say that I hate computers, I think I hate more my dependency on them.

The C Word & The S Word

Cancer. That's all the doctor has to mention and it sends me into a tailspin. Yes, they always err on the side of fatal illnesses so anything else you have feels like a blessing, but it's still disconcerting none the less. No, I don't have cancer....she believes....but she still wants to talk to the oncologist about my case and then check back around with me on Friday. I knew I didn't have it when they biopsied me back in February, but the very idea that they were testing me for it was enough of a loop that it took me some time to recover from it. So, over the last six months when I've had these suspicious symptoms, I never once thought about it. Then when we chatted last week, well, she brought it up again. I know my body, I know that I shut down on a few levels when I'm under stress, and this has happened before. But she didn't have to say cancer. I guess she did, it's her job. I guess what I'm worried about is this being a wish fulfillment kind of thing back when I thought having cancer would be a noble way to die since suicide isn't an option in my belief schema. I don't want that any more, I haven't for a long time. But I still worry whenever someone says the word. Fearing that wishes never die, they just hang out in a nebulous space in our lives waiting for the most opportune moment to blossom into fruition.

Sterilization. I knew that's what was going to happen when I had a hysterectomy, honestly, I knew it. But I've never heard it out loud. Again, I know my doctor is doing her job, she is very good at her job, but the idea that I'll be sterilized brings to mind the idea of eugenics and how the lesser of society was "sterilized" to be sure that they don't bring forth more idiots or morons or whatever the classification for society's excuse for this autrocity. Plus it makes it sound so irreversibly final. I know it's final, I truly am not an idiot or a moron, but I still preferred to sugar coat it for myself. Again, knocked for another loop. I feel like I'm in one of they gyroscope rides trying to stay calm enough to get off before another push sends me spinning again.

I haven't talked to anyone about either of these words. Because, right now, they are just words. My journal would be the best place to explore these concepts but I haven't found the time, the space or the energy to do that. I don't really have the time to do it with being on call 24/7 with my Mom. Even though she doesn't need it any more, she still "requires" it. I just needed to get it out of my head and somewhere and this seemed to be the best place for me to do that. If this doesn't work I'll have to pull out the big guns, only I might just end up shooting myself in the foot. Sigh.

The Price of Blessings

View all problems as challenges. Look upon negativities that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow. Don't run from them, condemn yourself, or bury your burden in saintly silence. You have a problem? Great. More grist for the mill. Rejoice, dive in, and investigate.

-Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, "Mindfulness in Plain English"

Very appropriate that it came today. The challenges to me normally come in mechanical packages. I went to the opera on Saturday in the City (That is San Francisco for those who aren't in the know), it's about 50 miles from home. I kept Lulu (my car) at a brisk 75mph all the way there and got through the basic streets towards Portola and Laguna Honda just fine. I started to climb Pacheco to get to 9th. street and there was a major hesitation in the car before it lurched forward into motion. I came to the next stop sign and I figured it was just a bad press on the accelerator on my part, but it happened again, and again I figured I was at fault. I always presume it's a PEBCAK* (Not the same for a car, but the premise is valid) so I tried it again. And again I had problems. Carol, my friend, lives on one of the steepest hills I've ever seen. Not one of the steepest hills in the City, but too steep to walk unless you want a coronary. So parking requires that you pull up to the curb, back up and curb your tires. Even with the emergency break on I wasn't able to control or hold my position on the hill well enough to maneuver into position. So, I backed out of it, using gravity and then went down the street thinking it would be easier to park on the flat of 10th instead of the hill of Ortega...but true to form, there wasn't any parking on the flats. So, I pulled up the hill again, trying to be as close to the curb as possible so I could curb my wheels and just turned her off and went to the opera.

The opera was FANTASTIC. Beautiful, lush, brilliant, everything that I had hoped and wanted in an opera. It almost made me forget about the looming problem ahead of me. Driving home. Well, don't fret, I didn't drive. I stayed over at Carol's and worked at finding a place that had a diagnostic department open on Sunday and had the techs on staff to do the work. Well, I found one....IN PLEASANT HILL. Which meant a $180 towing bill. Well, they couldn't diagnose it until Monday (today) but I was pretty sure it was the belts. To my knowledge they haven't been changed during the whole life of the car....162,000+ miles. It seemed about due.

Carol was kind enough to drive me home after Church. And I arranged with PJ to take me to work this morning and Isis to take me to Pleasant Hill tonight to pick up my car....which is all moot now because, well, it won't be ready tonight. It would be good if I can pick it up tomorrow.

Well, the good news is it's not the engine. The engine diagnostic came back fine. The bad news is, and you know there's always bad news when someone starts the sentence with good news...the transmission is shot. It's shot to the tune of $1,528. You know, horses don't cost that much and when they break, you can shoot them. I can't complain, I really can't. Like I said, I've got over 162,000 miles on her and I've only had her 10 years....you do the math. I can be assured with the new water pump (put on at the beginning of the year), the new (yet used) transmission, and the new tires (put on at the beginning of the year) I should be set with her for the next few years or so which is when I intend on putting the rest of the miles on her so I can trade her in for a hybrid of some sort. I'm hoping by that time competition will have driven the prices down.

But like the quote above says, look at challenges as opportunities. It's an opportunity to insure my safety, it's an opportunity to keep my car for as long as I want to/need to until it's time to upgrade to a more ecologically friendly model. And it has taught me to stop trying to think of ways to comfortably get out of going to church because if you look hard enough, Heavenly Father will provide you a way. I'm blessed that this didn't happen while I was trucking along at 75mph, or while I was at the top of a hill with someone behind or worse, with a person behind me. I could have hurt myself or worse, someone else. I am truly blessed, even with a $1500 price tag.

*PEBCAK: Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard