As I mentioned last week, we now have a new member of our family. I brought Skye home from Pets Mart yesterday and it’s been an interesting day (and night). Skye is three years old. I didn’t want a kitten for so many reasons. Basically, I’m not in a place mentally or physically to deal with the demands of a kitten. However, it’s been a long time since I had a young cat in the house, be it three months or three years old. Fluffy was 18 when she passed a couple of years ago. Sammie was 14, but had been dealing with arthritis and hip dysplasia for years, so she wasn’t especially active. Can’t say the same for Skye. I always thought Sammie was quite the little chatterbox. HA! Skye began to talk to me in the crate in the car on the way home and has not stopped. All night, she hasn’t stopped. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Meet Skye . She’s a small gray and orange torte who had been in the shelter since March after being abandoned by her former family. She has allergies and is on special f...

Presque Isle, Erie, PA Vacation. Ah, to escape. To de-stress, decompress, and relax. To sleep. And to eat. Monday -We arrived at Sara’s Campground around noon. Set up camp. Ate lunch. Went for short bike ride. Back at camp, I had a cup of coffee and broke into the Kettle Chips. Did some reading. Fixed supper. Ate supper. Took photographs of sunset. Did some more reading while finishing the bag of kettle chips. Went to bed early. (Is it any wonder I gain weight on vacation?) Tuesday -After sleeping for ten hours, we got up, ate breakfast, packed a lunch and hit the bike trail. We stopped at all the interesting points along the way including the Perry Monument. The Interpretive Pontoon Boat tours of the lagoon were closed down indefinitely due to mechanical problems, so we kept going. We stopped at Beach 10 to get our feet wet. I love standing in the water and let the waves lap at my ankles. It washes the tension out of me little by little. Next we stopped in a cove of trees for a shady ...

With Mom settled into the Health Center, doing exceptionally well with her therapy, hubby and I are seizing the opportunity to escape for a few days. It was Mom’s idea, months ago, that while she was rehabbing, we sneak in a vacation. My first reaction was, NO, I couldn’t do that…leave her there and go off to have fun. Then as time went on and Sammie passed, I thought, well, maybe. So we’re going camping. Of course, NOW Mom is hitting me with a guilt trip, telling me how she’s going to miss me. I’m used to the guilty looks Sammie used to give me when she spotted us packing. No matter how discreet I tried to be, she knew. As sad as I am over her absence in my life, I thought I’d at least be able to take a vacation without dealing with the guilt of leaving her behind. Instead, I get to feel guilty about leaving Mom behind. Sigh. But I know she’ll be fine. And I’ll have my cell phone. What did we do before cell phones? I’ll tell you what we did. We escaped on vacations in ignorant bliss, ...

It occurred to me today that for the biggest part of this year, I’ve been distraught. In January, I was distraught over my dad’s declining health and his eventual passing. In February, I started my Sammie kitty on chemo following the news that the cancer was back. In March, my cousins were in that horrible car crash. After that came long, painful months of watching Patty struggle her way back from brain injury and hovering over Sammie, watching for symptoms to develop. And they did. At the same time as Sammie’s health grew worse, Mom’s pain also increased and surgery became imminent. Sammie’s battle ended and Mom’s operation came and went along with an array of complications. Wednesday, we transferred Mom to the Washington County Health Center for rehab. She’s doing fabulous. All the post-op complications have resolved themselves and she spent yesterday sitting up in a wheelchair between rounds of occupational therapy and physical therapy. I took a side trip up to the third floor where...

I'm over at Working Stiffs today telling about my experiences in the city this week. Come on over and join us. Mom update: They finally got her up again yesterday and she didn't pass out. YAY! Still a long way to go, though...

It’s been a roller coaster weekend following my mom’s operation. She gave us all a real scare on Friday when her body started showing the stress of a very difficult surgery. She passed out when they tried to teach her to stand and again when they tried to get her back in bed. Her blood pressure plummeted and her heart rate soared. Her hemoglobin count and oxygen levels were down and her blood sugar was up. At 2:30 Saturday morning, they transferred her to the cardiovascular unit. Five units of blood later, she’s doing much better. Each day finds her feeling stronger. But they haven’t made an effort to get her up again yet. They want her numbers to be on more solid ground first. In other family news, Patty is home!!! After a very long haul (the accident was March third), she is finally out of the nursing facility. I’d love to say that she’s back living next door to me, but sadly, the house was seized and sold at sheriff’s sale. But she’s living only five minutes away and I intend on k...

Patience is a virtue. Or so I’ve been told. For me, it’s a matter of survival. I sent my manuscript to my agent on Tuesday. Now I wait. I have lots of practice. Yesterday, my mom had her hip replacement surgery. Or hip REVISION surgery to use the correct technical term. It’s a replacement of a replacement. The original replacement took place in 1976, in the dark ages of such procedures. The last four or five weeks have been torture for my mom as the pain seemed to grow exponentially day by day. We had to be at the hospital by 5AM yesterday morning. That meant leaving here by 3:30AM. Early even by my standards. The rain started at 3:15 and continued to pour the entire dark drive into Pittsburgh. Dark, that is, except for the vivid lightning that nearly burnt out my retinas. But we made it with time to spare. There is very little traffic at that hour. Parking was plenty and the hospital corridors leading into the main lobby were silent and eerie. We had to wait for the registration desk ...

I don’t need to go to Egypt or even the Rockshelter at Meadowcroft to take part in an archeological excavation. I had my own little uncovering of historical relics right here in my own house this weekend. It started with the new storage space created by the wardrobe from IKEA (scroll down if you missed it). I was going through our vast collection of “stuff” (AKA junk) determining what to toss and what to place on one of the shelves of the new wardrobe and I unearthed my dear old Jenny mare’s AQHA registration papers. Technically, I should have sent them in to AQHA headquarters when she died, but at the time I was distraught and couldn’t bring myself to make her death “official.” Now, eleven years later, it seems somewhat superfluous. However, holding her papers in my hands once again brought a flood of emotion. Maybe on the heels of losing my Sammie, memories of another time of grief hit me a little harder than they might have otherwise. Jenny was my once-in-a-lifetime horse, the way ...

The wardrobe project went surprisingly well. We managed to get the entire thing put together in one evening. With no swearing. Amazing. The only problem is that it’s BIG. Funny, it didn’t look that huge in the store. But in our little house… I don’t care. I’ve been whining about needing storage space for over twenty years. The deal we’ve struck is that hubby doesn’t complain about the size of the wardrobe and I don’t complain about needing closet space. Ever again. My thoughts are, if we can’t fit our stuff in this thing, we definitely have too much stuff. The wardrobe isn’t the only thing that’s finished. As of yesterday my final draft of my manuscript is DONE. Now I have to compose a killer summary of it for the query email to my agent. Here are some pictures of the wardrobe. First, in pieces and then the completed project.

We went to IKEA this weekend. Every time I come out of that store, I’m exhausted. I think it’s because the way the store is laid out, you have to walk past every single item to get to what you want and back out again. You can’t just run to bedding and be done with it. No. You have to follow the arrows through kitchens and living rooms and storage units and bathrooms and office and… I would be really annoyed if I weren’t so darned impressed by whatever retail genius came up with the design. However, after wandering the entire maze on Sunday and then going back with the truck yesterday to order the ONE PIECE we wanted, I must say, I’ve enough of IKEA for a while. We bought a three-door wardrobe for use as closet space in our living room. It should fit where my desk used to sit. At least, I HOPE it will fit where my desk used to sit. Currently the two boxes containing the pieces for the do-it-yourself project remain in the back of the pick up truck. Operation: Furniture Construction gets...

Anyone who has never allowed a pet to share their life or their world has no idea of the anguish of losing that little companion. Sammie isn’t the first cat I’ve lost, but she’s definitely the one who has had the biggest impact on my life, sharing everything from my office to my bed. The last few months, watching squamous cell carcinoma eat large raw ulcers on and under her tongue have been nothing short of torture. Deciding late last week to put an end to it was devastating. Now I’m trying to come to grips with my decision and the quiet that has settled over my house like a thick fog. I wondered how long before I got back to a place where I could write. Especially when my current work in progress is about a vet who is owned by two cats, one of which is a composite of my late Fluffy and Sammie. The answer came Wednesday when I was trying to see through the tears to read email and instead, opened my novel’s file. The story sucked me in and I spent several hours escaping from my world in...

Samantha AKA "Sammie" 1993-July 31, 2007

Yesterday morning I dragged my weary backside out of bed early for a rescue mission road trip. After what seemed like weeks of trying to make arrangements for transporting my now gentled kittens to a foster mom in eastern Maryland, she and I decided to take matters into our own hands and meet half-way (or close to it) to make the exchange. You have to realize, these kittens have never been off the farm. To them, the world consisted of the barn and part of my back yard. I had told them they were going on a road trip. But they didn't know what a road was. Or a trip. They were in for a shock. Loading them into my Pet Taxi didn’t go as smoothly as I would have hoped. Two kittens, two hands. Sounded like a good plan. Except for one minor glitch. One of those hands also had to close the crate’s door. When I did, lightning-quick Sophie escaped. Which was better than Chickie getting away. I don’t know that I’d have re-caught her. But I was able to coax Sophie back into my reach and get her...

Well, the kids are back from summer camp. Figuratively speaking, of course. The “kids” to which I refer are the copies of my manuscript that I sent out to my first readers. Frankly, I got darned little done while they were away. But isn’t that always the case? Anyway, I’m back to work on my “final” draft. Or at least, the final one before sending it off to my agent. I hope to see it again when an editor requests changes before publishing it. Just as I still hope to get a chance to make some changes to the manuscript of HORSE OF A DIFFERENT KILLER at some point. But for now, I’m firmly ensconced in Revision Hell. As I go through the notes which my wonderful first readers have made on the pages of the manuscript, I see there is considerable work to be done on the beginning. And the ending. And the middle. So much for my pipedream of adding a line or two here and there. Nope. It goes much deeper than that. If there is good news, it’s that the plot has been deemed sound. It’s the relations...

I'm over at Working Stiffs today talking about fears and phobias. Come over and join us.

In the midst of all the tumult that has become my life, I found a few minutes of quiet yesterday, sitting astride a horse on a hillside with only the breeze rustling the clover and alfalfa and sound of very distant traffic drifting up from the valley below to disrupt the stillness. Years ago when I still had my own horses, trail riding was my “thing.” The connection between equine and human, the trust and communication was like nothing else in the world. My old mare, Jenny, carried me into mountains, across rivers, through woods and fields. I tended to get us into predicaments. She always got us out of them. If she were still alive, I would still have horses. Or at least I would still have her . But she died over ten years ago and eventually I got out of the horse business. Physically at least. But the woods still called to me. Hiking never cut it with me. I may enjoy biking, but a bicycle is a poor runner up to a horse. Recently, I’ve been drawn back into my old world by a neighboring...

I must be getting old. Certain things bug me that didn’t use to. And certain things that use to bug me no longer do. What set me on this particular train of thought was something that happened today in the parking lot at the grocery store. I had returned my cart to the little cart corral and was walking back to my car. A nice looking young guy was backing his shiny new Cadillac out of his parking space toward me and I stopped so he wouldn’t have to be concerned about hitting me. Okay, maybe I was the one who was concerned, even though he had plenty of room. But he braked and smiled at me and said, “Go ahead, babe.” Babe . Not ma’am . Babe . I shot him my best killer smile and gave him an enthusiastic “Thank you!” What he didn’t realize is I wasn’t thanking him for being polite and letting me continue on my way. I was thanking him for calling me BABE. Is that sad, or what? There was a time when my feminist ethics would have caused me to bristle at such a thing. Now, it totally makes my ...

On Friday the thirteenth (no, we’re not superstitious), I took my mom to our beloved orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Ray. He’s the doctor who fixed my hubby’s broken foot last year and also did surgery on both my dad’s knees, replaced Mom’s right hip a few years back, and has done surgeries on several other family members and friends. All with good results. This time, we were there for Mom’s LEFT hip, the one that had originally been replaced back in 1976. No, that isn’t a typo. 1976. Her left hip replacement is thirty-one years old. And it’s shot. So the next big thing in my life is going to be the replacement of the replacement of Mom’s left hip. The surgery is not going to be an easy one. There are lots of unknowns. Not every detail is evident in the x-rays. What is evident is a large amount of cement and a small amount of bone in that hip. The cement will have to come out. Additional bone will have to be grafted. It doesn’t sound like fun. That’s the next big thing. As for previous and cur...

Yesterday was my birthday. I had made plans to have lunch out with a friend at one of my favorite restaurants. When will I ever learn never to make plans? Around 8:30 in the morning, when I was in the midst of my morning chores, which include scooping the litter box, it occurred to me that Sammie hadn’t…well…how to put it delicately? She hadn’t had a bowel movement in almost a week. I looked at her lying on my office chair. She seemed sad. Maybe it was just tired. Either way, I freaked out and called the vet and was told to have her there in two hours. I cancelled my lunch plans. I had visions of bowel blockages and surgery that I would refuse to put her through with everything else going on. I wept, convinced this was going to be our last trip to the vet. Sammie perked up. She looked at me as if to ask “What’s wrong with you?” She no longer looked sad or tired. She looked like herself. Okay, maybe we could get by with an enema. Dear Dr. Barnes poked and prodded and declared that there...

Today, over at The Lipstick Chronicles , Rebecca the Bookseller wrote about a study that linked stress with weight gain. Like Rebecca, I can’t believe it took a scientific study to reach this conclusion. I’ve been under a little stress the last few years and I’ve gained almost fifteen pounds. Never mind that I’ve also been spending a lot of time with my bum glued to my chair as I work on my writing. Never mind the slowing metabolism of being in my mid (okay, late) forties. I blame it on stress. Or perhaps my own method of dealing with stress: chocolate. Specifically Lindor Truffles . When I got on the scale last week and saw the numbers had taken another upward turn, I made the difficult decision to give up my daily stress-buster dose of chocolate. Which is creating more stress. Then a friend of mine gave me an early birthday cake. A chocolate one. Oooo, it was good. Hey, you cannot refuse chocolate when it comes in the form of a birthday gift. That would just be rude. Speaking of stre...