Truckers, Don't Make Me Come Back to Haunt You!

(Courtesy of www.FreeFoto.com )

Yesterday, I nearly (and unexpectedly) joined the Real World Dead (as opposed to the FaceBook Dead, from which I recently arose to live a second life). Real World death is permanent. And we are always just one misstep away from Eternity.

What does this have to do with truckers?

Yesterday, my mortal body was almost life-suckingly mashed inside my Jeep, squashed with my vehicle between a big blue semi and a concrete freeway wall. The Coroner would have had the unpleasant task of prying the remains of my cold, dead hands out of whatever was left of my twisted steering wheel.

Instead of blogging, I would be sending messages of comfort and love from the Other Side to my DH - and haunting a certain dumb-!?#@&! truck driver for the rest of his earthly life. His keys would have a way of disappearing from his pockets. His tires would have a way of going flat in rest stop parking lots. His logbooks would have a way of drawing the attention of regulators.

I would get him off the road.

Luckily, I can't do that. Miraculously, I'M ALIVE!!!
So here's a message to all you road warriors out there:

Mirrors are not the mack truck equivalent of bling.
They have a purpose.
They prevent those missteps that boot mortals into the Hereafter.

Use them wisely, or else.

July Dial-up Dilemma

(Courtesy of http://www.freefoto.com )

(Written 07/09/2010)
First, let me explain my lack-o-blogging (or any other online communication) last week. My mother was hospitalized for a serious (okay, life-threatening) infection (she's doing well; thanks for asking) so I was otherwise occupied.

Now that we're at Mom's house, my online access is limited to an old PC with a dial-up connection.

Wow. I mean, WOW.

I'd forgotten what the online world was like in the old days. It's like I traded in my Ferrari for a donkey cart. Mom is too sick for me to go out, so I have a bad feeling I may not be able to post this for a long time.

Yesterday, after waiting for Yahoo to load for five minutes, I decided to try to clean up Mom's hard drive and update her programs to speed things up. I cleaned up her disk, got rid of trash, pared down her start-up menu.

Pared a few seconds off the Yahoo load time. *SIGH*

HP wanted to update Windows, so I let it. Six hours later Windows XP Service Pack 3 was installed.

Six. Long. Hours.

The PC booted up a little faster this morning, but Yahoo? Not so much.

HP wants to update Windows again. *SIGH*

Think I'll try to download Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 instead.

If that fails, maybe the night nurse will let me upload this blog on the hospital's wireless system when I bring Mom in for her evening IV antibiotic infusion. Mom's nurses go above and beyond the call of duty.

Hmmm. I think Nurse Dave is on duty tonight. I wouldn't mind asking him.
Wow. I mean, WOW.

There's always a silver lining, right?

Where I Disappeared to in July

(courtesy of http://www.freefoto.com/ )

I planned to post regularly during our vacation, and technically I did.

I posted once the last week in June and then SURPRISE, an unexpected event happened on the third day of our three-week California/Oregon trip - during an absolutely scrumptious abalone dinner at my nephew Max's house in Sacramento, to be exact.
Have you noticed that unexpected events can be good news or bad news, but at first it's often too early to tell? Not so in this case. My Aunt Jean called to tell us my mother had just been admitted to the hospital with a raging sinus infection. She'd been on oral antibiotics, but the infection got worse.
Our vacation gave way to panic (after a five-minute period of denial: Me-"She's probably just dehydrated. Maybe it isn't that serious." DH-"She's in the HOSPITAL, honey. It's that serious.") The next morning we were on the road at daybreak, headed a days' drive north to Bend, Oregon.
By the time we arrived at St. Charles Medical Center (AKA, 'the hospital'), Mom was getting re-hydrated with IV fluids and getting some pain relief from IV morphine, but she couldn't remember the word for animal doctor or that stick with the bristles you use to clean your teeth, and I couldn't convince her she hadn't gone home to find her house overrun with bad little boys who'd drawn on the walls with crayons.
Dr. Boddie (pronounced 'body'; isn't that a hoot?), my husband, and I all came to the same conclusion at about the same time: sinus infections don't require patients to be harnessed to their beds because they are in La-la Land. Something else was afoot.
Dr. Boddie transferred Mom to the ICU and ordered a spinal tap. Long story short, the infection had spread to her spinal fluid. Mom had meningitis and encephalitis (infection of the lining of the brain and spinal cord as well as the brain itself), a life-threatening infection.
Luckily this story has a happy ending. Mom is one tough mother!

And the staff of doctors, nurses, medical technicians, and support personnel at St. Charles are phenomenally professional and compassionate angels of mercy.
A different combo of IV antibiotics began to kill of the killer bacteria. When Mom was strong enough, ENT surgeon Dr. Villano cleaned out all the unmentionable gunk that blocked her sinus openings and then enlarged said openings so she wouldn't get another infection. A semi-permanent IV hookup thingy called a 'pick' was installed in Mom's arm so that she could have infusions of IV drugs twice a day for a week after she went home.
I cared for Mom in her home until she could manage on her own, but I'm down to weekly visits now (in August). She's made a miraculous recovery, thanks to the St. Charles staff and some answered prayers.

I'll blog later about silver linings and messages from the Other Side, but first I'll post the one blog I wrote while at Mom's but was unable to post.

An Edgy Post

I've been fascinated by the edges of things for years. (One of my many quirks. Corners, too.)

Edgelands tend to be dangerous places:
The edge of night.
The edge of reason.
A cliff's edge.
Virgins on the verge.
(A verge is an edge, right?)
The edge of panic.
The edge of insanity.

Do you know that deer prefer to live at the edge of the forest, where trees share space with the lesser plants? Maybe that's why more deer live in Iowa, with it's cornfields and pastures and patches of woods, than in our huge Northwestern forests. More edgelands. Also more roads - and thus (unfortunately), more roadkill. I told you the edgelands are dangerous. Someone should convince the deer.

And what about the edges of a rainbow, where red light slips into infrared and violet slides into ultraviolet? Where does one color end and the next begin? Do photons vacillate between the Seen and the Unseen, like our minds at the edge of sleep?

My limits stretch and blur when I'm on the edge of consciousness. In that twilight land between the world of dreams and the everyday world, creativity blossoms; present, past, and future co-exist; anything can happen - and usually does.

My stories begin in the Edgelands.

Caution

If you're planning on leaving this mortal coil anytime soon, be forwarned: according to my DH, Hell hath now officially frozen over because I'm FINALLY blogging.

That being said, welcome to my blog!

For a couple of years now, not a week has passed without Chuck pointing out my digital shortcomings. "You're a writer, for Pete's sake! Blogging should be a no-brainer." (Yes, I censor his comments.)

Right. He assumes I am a bottomless font of wit and wisdom. As if.

But, after mulling this over for a long, LONG time, I've decided to begin weekly blogging. If I link this to Facebook in a month or two, it will help bring my page out of hibernation. Two birds and all that.

So here's the plan: I'll post on Fridays.

Umbrella topics will be (with apologies to Oprah),

I Don't Know Much for Sure--But These Guys Might
Flummoxed
PFM (Pure F-ing Magic), or God Works in Mysterious Ways
Ain't Life Grand!

Y'all Come back tomorrow, hear?