BOLO: For Spring

If you knew me well, you'd know that, in much the same way that the kid from "The Sixth Sense" saw dead people, I see (and write about) crimes.  Mystery.  Oh, yeah, and dead people.

But not actually dead.  And not actually people. More like potential, imaginary, fictional dead people.  Like, if I were to find myself in the beer cooler at Dave's Super Market, I'd go "Wow, what if someone walked in here and there was a dead person (a blue dead person) leaned stiffly up against the six packs of St. Pauli Girl."  How cool (NPI) would that be???

It's like I'm living the first five minutes of "Castle" or "Bones" over and over again.  In my head.  At the store.  Only not as gross.  I'm usually eating something or planning to eat a little something in the next two or three hours or so, so I try not to be imaginative in that  gross and disgusting, sort of liquidy, way that Castle and Bones specialize in.  Eeww.

My point?  Getting there.  I LOVE those stories and I relish all the lingo.  Like recently I encountered BOLO in Tina Whittle's debut novel The Dangerous Edge of Things. (Read this novel. I read it.  I loved it.  It's way fun.  Just do it.  And if my just do it recommendation isn't persuasive enough, see my review at Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Edge-Things-Randolph-Mystery/product-reviews/1590588193/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending And ask me why I have such a ridiculous user name there.  Go ahead.  I ask myself, myself.  Lizzie?  Really?)

I'd seen BOLO in books and heard it bandied about on TV before but I had to look it up.  It means Be On The Lookout.  As in "As soon as I saw Frankie Brancusi leaned up against the six packs of St. Pauli Girl in the beer cooler at Dave's, I put out a BOLO for Ralph "The Iceman" Boyardee.  'Sonofabitch is at it again,' I muttered, 'and this time, he's mine.'" 

I like BOLO.  It's the kinder, gentler kid brother of the APB.  "Keep an eye open for ....  If you happen to run across....  When he shows up at the N-Spot .... lemme know.  But for crissake don't shoot him.  Just, you know.  BOLO."

Now for the non-crime, philosophical application.  My experience suggests that if you put out a BOLO for something you'd like to see in the world or in your more immediate life, it has a better chance of showing up. (I know.  Woo woo.  Wackyass.  New Age bs.  Get over it.  Choose to be happier, you sour cynic.)

What I really need right now is some serious spring.  I have two new bionic knees and it's tough to get them up to six million dollar speed inside the house.  Walls will stop you.  Plus it's been slimy, icy, dark and rainy/snowing for quite some time and a change would be appreciated.  Therefore I invite us all to BOLO for spring.  And to give us all a little boost, here are some signs of Spring in Cleveland that might be interpreted as signs of winter in other, less challenging climes:

The small round "lakes" in the roads are no longer frozen over into teeny, tiny skating ponds.  Check.  (And swerve to avoid.)

Ten thousand ducks are engaging in a social convention that can only be described as "duck speed dating."  Check.  (In case anyone ever asks you where baby ducks come from, tell them Lake Erie.  It's a kind of single's bar.  For ducks.)

Against my better judgment and in spite of my kind warnings, daffodils are popping up like the true morons they are.  Check.  Check. Check check check.

The buds of the leaves of summer 2011 are clearly delineated  against the blank gray of the sky.   Check. 

The grass is green.  Greener.   Checking.  Checking.  Keep checking.

The wild garlics are springing up like the creepy intractable weeds they are.  Soon the garden will be in full and lavish ... ah ...  smelly garlicky weed bloom.  Check.  Pewie.

Now it's your turn.  BOLO for spring!  It'll make you happier, I promise.  And if you happen to see Ralphie B.  hanging out up at Dave's, lemme know.  But for crissake, don't shoot him.  Just, you know, BOLO.

Ice, Ice, Baby.

I'm back.  And I've been gone so long even Blogger didn't remember me.  What can I say.  It was knee surgery.  It was Turkey Day.  It was Christmas.  It was New Years.  It was my birthday.  I was preoccupied.  But I'm here now.

Talking about ice.

I'm confident that if you're savvy enough to go bloggering about the Internet, you already know that the Native Americans formerly (and I believe now un-PC-ly) known as Eskimos had something like 100 words for snow.  Presumably that was because they didn't have TV, cars, drive-in movies or iPads and got really familiar with snow.  Which was one thing -- maybe almost the only thing -- they did have.

This is a pretty story and there's a lesson in there I'm sure, but apparently it's not exactly true. These indigenous peoples, while they must have had many distinctions for snow that even, say, Clevelanders don't have, they didn't have 100.

According to Wiki (No-Leaki) Pedia: 

"One can create a practically unlimited number of new words in the Eskimoan languages on any topic, not just snow, and these same concepts can be expressed in other languages using combinations of words." 

Apparently, this is because of prefixes and word combos like "ohno more crappy" snow or "don't tell me it's ^&*%$ snowing again" snow.   Which aren't distinct words as much as a possible heartfelt sentiment of the Inuit peoples. 

Which brings me, inevitably, as always, to me.

And to my lake which is currently freezing over because it's been way cold.  And rather calm.  Which creates excellent conditions for the freezing of lakes. 

We have lived at the brink of this lake for five full winters now.  This is Winter #6.  We get asked quite a few questions about when, how, why -- all that -- the lake freezes.  The answer, the truth, is:  Beats me.

Every year it's been different.  The first year it didn't freeze at all.  It tried.  But no luck.

Winter 2, it froze overnight.  From a turgid, gelular (I knew there was no word such as gelular -- gel-like, it was) sort of subdued state at bedtime, it went dead solid by 3 a.m.  I wrote about this in my third unpublished novel, as follows:

"It was a white night.  For a moment I couldn’t absorb what I was seeing.  At dusk, the ice had been just a thin line, barely visible on the horizon. And Emily had showed me the slushy bubbles she called Slurpee Ice just beginning to congeal.  Now the freezing had overcome everything. The lake was a bright plain, flat and dazzling under the stark glare of a high, almost-full moon.  Just like that.  Close in to shore I could see a few black rivers of water still moving.  Fed by some warmer current and still alive in that pale, dead world." 

(This insight on the part of my protagonist was followed shortly thereafter by murder and mayhem and a denouement that occurred out there on the ice.  But that's not important now.)
 

And it actually was also an introduction to one of my own 100 words for ice:   Slurpee Ice.  Granular coatings of crushed coldness that snap frozen. Just like that.  

"Ah," I mused back then. "So that's how it happens!"  

Nope.  That's how it happened in Winter 2.  

In the ensuing winters I have coined such new expressions as "Chunky Monkey Ice,  Sparkling Diamond Ice,  Crazy Jumbled-Up Ice, Blowing Sand Dune Snow/Ice, Hockey-able Ice,  'Look At That Triangle of Ice!' Ice."  Last year was "Wooee!  Big Mountain!" Ice.  And this year "Telephone Line Ice" for unexpectedly smooth ice with lots of long, straight, hair-line cracks running through it. 

So, big surprise.  It's never quite the same.  That's just the way of it.  Yesterday there was a bald eagle sitting out there wondering why there was a &*(&%% floor between him and the fish.  Today a coyote, moving quick. On very cold paws, I'm guessing. 

Every year.  Every season.  Every day is different on Lake E.   The photo I took 45 minutes ago, is out of date now as snow coats our world.  The breakers of autumn have become a silent field of snow.  There's a word for that.

I think I'll call this one, "Beautiful."

At Christmas

My book club, as I've written here before, tends to push me towards doing things I'd not normally do. Read hard, sad, rigorous books, like The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, for example.  Or, on at least one occasion, write a poem.  Out of sheer Christmas Desperation.

Usually, for our December meeting, we don't read any book, either rigorous or fluffy, on the assumption that everybody is way too busy.  We gather together around somebody's cozy fire, eat cookies and drink wine, and each of us reads from some Christmasy thing we like.  Sometimes Ida plays her cello.  That is a particular treat. 

Coupla Christmases ago I was planning to read from A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas.  Just a bit here and there and then the end which goes like this:

"Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept."

So, just to make sure I could pronounce parts like "moonlight" and "snow," I read through it aloud.  Guess what.  I could pronounce all of it, but I couldn't read the end without crying.  There was something about that "close and holy darkness" thing that cracked open my heart in the most awkward way.  

I don't know if it's because December binds us irrevocably to the tender hopes and dreams of childhood.  Or if it's the liturgy of the season that pours down upon us in sacred hymns and olde favorites like "Baby, It's Cold Outside." But for me there's a Ghost of Christmas Past on every corner, roasting chestnuts and stirring dreams. My memories of that little town in which I grew up, embellished by the passage of a lot of time and the erasure of the commonplaceness of the place, are rich, sweet and overpowering.  When Dylan says, "I could see the lights in the windows of all the the other houses on our hill?" Well, Ack!  I can see them, too.

So, that was out.  What to do?  Who knew what other emotional pitfalls lurked in beloved stories of the holiday?  I decided to pull one of my old sleight of hand tricks from my copywriting days.  If I needed a quote and didn't have time to get permission or whatever, I'd write one of my own and attribute it to Anonymous.  

I decided to write a Christmas Poem.  Ha!  

And I did.  I tried to capture what the season is like for women, who so often are the ones called upon to do a magical juggling act of bright ornaments, favorite recipes, sacred traditions and -- yes -- the perfect gift. Men make a ton of Christmas, too, and it would be no fun without them, no doubt.  But this was a girl poem for the ladies of the club.  I stuffed it full of hope and angst such as I feel when it's all too much, too, big, too fragile, too holy to deal with.  This is it.  

A Christmas Prayer

Bear us up, O baby in the manger.

Bear us up through the list-making, the driving, the parking, the trudging, the shopping, the wrapping, the baking, the cooking, the hoping that all will be well and all merry.  

It is the women who make the Christmas.  It is the women who wake at three o’clock in the morning and sit straight up in bed whispering to a man, who snores in oblivious yuletide bliss, “We forgot Nancy!”

It was a woman who made the first Christmas. 

Joseph swore he had nothing to do with it. 

And the other Father—well, where was He? 

Cheer us up, O baby in the manager.

Forgive us, for we know not what we’ve spent.

Surely, truly, we can never forgive ourselves. 

Bless us.  We mean well.

We mean to be gracious and not churlish.

To be generous and not begrudging.

To be kind, to be calm.  

To Be Organized.

Unfrazzle our hearts.

Lift us up, O baby in the manger.

Be the forgiving one who said “Love one another as I have loved you,”

 Not the one who threatened a lot of casting into outer darkness and gnashing of teeth.

(Reassure me that that one was just a case of bad reporting.)

I gnash my teeth and “click to submit my order.”

And wait for the UPS man to arrive with Christmas in a box.

So, raise us up, O Baby in the manger who might have preferred something from the Sears Wish Book to the cold foretelling of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Guide us through the valley of the shadow of the thought that nothing we do in this season of the year could possibly be holy. 

And lift us to the hope that anything we do in this season of the year might, by thy grace, be holier than we know.   Amen.

I didn't cry.  Well, maybe a glimmer and a catch at the end.  The ladies were nice about it. 

I expect to be back blogging before The Big Day, but in the meantime:  Happy Whatever Holiday fills you with the Spirit of the Season.  

And as one of my most favorite bumper stickers prays:  "God bless everyone.  No exceptions."

What I'm Thankful For

For starters, I'm thankful to Winston Churchill for having liberated us all from the No Prepositions At The End Of A Sentence rule. Well, most of us.  I know there are a few clenched-jawed hold-outs.  Keep clenching, folks.  You connect us to our Puritan roots. 

So what am I really thankful for?  Look.  Anytime you yield consciousness and control to a man who's about to take a saw to your leg, you are grateful to wake up.  As a particularly delightful bonus, you are grateful to wake up, feeling quite happy to be looking out a sunshiny window with a lot of kind people just finishing up on your new knee and talking to you nicely.  Miss I Cannot Remember Your Name: You were SO NICE.  Thank you! 

So for starters, I am seriously thankful to be alive and walking excellently.  I am also thankful for never getting shot in the leg (or any part of me) during the American Civil War (or any war for that matter.)  I know how lucky I am.  In so many,  many ways.

While I'm being thankful, I should throw in ALL the people, every single one at the Cleveland Clinic.  I agree with Robin Williams that I wish for all people everywhere that kind of medical care and emotional support.  From the guy with the seeing eye dog who hears you coming and welcomes you to the Orthopaedics Department, to the lady playing the harp like an angel in the main lobby, to the nurses and aides who are insanely patient with patients, to the surgeon who totally knows what he's doing and acts like it, to Mary Ann, the surgeon's nurse clinician who totally knows what YOU should be doing and helps you do that with even more patience and good humor than the nurses, if such a thing were possible.  And Patsy, the Physical Therapist, who made me laugh so I didn't notice she was breaking off my limbs.  I am thankful unto you all.  Even, maybe especially, the dog who so warmed my heart with his steadfastness.

I'm thankful for my fabulous, irreplaceable friends and family members who clucked so sweetly about how was I doing and did I need anything and then showered us with cards, food, flowers and food that looks like flowers, gifts, visits, phone calls, emails, and tender concern.  If I do any "especiallys" here I'm sure I'll leave somebody wonderful out.  But folks, you know who you are.  I am thinking of you ... yes YOU ... right now, with such gratitude, not just for how kind and generous you were on this occasions but what miraculous friends you are to me always forever and as-a-rule.  I see your faces as I write. 

And if I have your plastic container, I swear you'll get it back. 

Which enumeration brings us, of course, to immediate family:

Cujo was okay.   He has such a penchant for jumping on the very spot of my knee that should never be touched by cat claws and he did not respond to my condition with either sympathy or empathy.  However, he gets a pass because he's genetically incapable, being a felidae and a true carnivore.  And he's been warm and furry on my behalf.  Every recuperating person should be tended to by a warm and furry friend.  And learn to fend off a furry Knee Attacker.

John's been great.  Solicitous would be the word.  Helpful would be another.  Concerned like you would be if you really, really liked the limping person.  A mother lives for such moments.  Enough said.  Thank you, John, for being my kind and wonderful son.  And for bringing Allie (and her pies) into the picture at just the perfect moment. 

But here at the end of all thankfulnessworthy things, who gets the Oscar for Best Picture?  Who showed up and was incredibly nice about it, every single time I got him up in the darkest section of the night. (Multiple, multiple times.) Who brought me things, even things I didn't deserve, ALL THE TIME?  And told me I was being strong when I was actually whining (or at least groaning) quite a bit. (To be honest there was a lot of groaning and considerable moaning, much of it merely on principle, because if stuff didn't hurt, it seemed to me as if it should.  Or might.  At some point.)  Who was worried and caring and vigilant? Who counted pills and bugged me about the therapy exercises even when I was snarly? And did I mention who was kind?  And not merely kind of kind?  Who made me laugh?  And helped me feel pretty and lovable even when I was ... not. 

Bill.  My Billy.

He has so many points hoarded up in the magnificent guy/excellent husband department, it scares me. I'll never be able to pay him back.  I think he may have covered the "sickness and health" clause forever.   

I also think, skimming back over what I've written here, that the thing I'm most thankful for in all of this is love of one kind or another.  Every clumsy step of the way, I have felt amazingly, luckily, undeservedly loved.  And Bill has loved me in the most generous, forgiving, and encouraging manner for the past way too many years -- and especially for the last month.  Thank you forever, Bill.

So, thank you, all you loving people mentioned and alluded to here.  Like I said,  you know who you are.  And so do I.

Love,
Annie

No, no, NaNo.

Alas.  I think I'm sunk.  Although with great joy I can report that I'm doing great -- no, seriously, fabulously -- with the challenges of National Knee Month, I don't think I'm going to make the NaNo.  For all kinds of reasons.

I fear I shall never win the right to wear my NaNo Winner badge.  Or even the Rally badge for 5,000 words in a day.

I feel bad about this.

First of all, I am still just in LOVE with the idea of the thing.  The idea of almost a billion and a half words in half of a month.  Ordinary words like "duck" and "book" and extraordinary words like "perspicacious" and "fey."  Unleashed upon the world.  Wielded.  Set free by us writers to do their best and worst.

It plum makes me want to cry.

I have adored being an inadequate, limping member of such a magnificent crazy band of devil-may-care devils.  I already feel as though my cold little nose is pressed against the bakery window of camaraderie. (I am just about one step from lighting matches, here in the snowy night, to keep myself warm.  Oh, piteous.  I am.)

I hate The Quitter in me.  I know her so well.  She marshals excuses.  Identifies the nearest exit.  Tries to look brave and well-groomed instead of sneaky and churlish.  She sneaks and churls all over the place.  And then she tries to be cute about it.  Give her no quarter.  Let her have another box of matches and turn her back out into the snow.  The loser.

I also feel guilty as hell about Agatha Jane Porter and her cat named Hastings.  And Jack her deadbeat dad, the newspaper editor.  And Virgil her handyguy who doesn't want to fix the things she wants to have fixed.  And not the way she wants them fixed, neither.  And the doc.  They're all right there on the very eve of their big adventure: Knee surgery and murder.  Murder committed.  Murder revealed.

I already know who done it.  And I'm as amazed as anybody.  Wow.  Perfidy, most rank and vile.

But here's "the problem."  When I sit anywhere long enough to write anything, it hurts.  It's not agony or anything, but, for example, my hip, which does not have permission to throb under the current administration, throbs.  And other stuff, too.  It just doesn't feel like a smart thing to do for long stretches right now.  And let's face it.  I'll never make it without some very, very long stretches.  I had high hopes yesterday for manageable bites, but it got bad before I got very far.  And I quit.  Loser.

Here's something I don't feel bad about.  My fellow travelers.  Viv.  Maura.  Marilyn.  Viv is plain insane.  I believe she will make it, not because she loves it but because, by gum, she said she was gonna and she's gonna.  She's already poured too much aggravation on the altar of NaNo to back off now.  You go, Viv.  And do not be dragged down by trollish behavior on my part.  Maura and Marilyn, I salute your path.  I hear considerable doubt, but I also know this was a strong and positive step for you.  Keep going.  Everybody keep going.

Because that's what I'm going to do.  Not at the driven, must ... have ... 50.... thousand ... words pace.  Must wear the badge, come hell or high water.  But as much as I can and keep the peace with the hip bone which is connected to the the thigh bone which is glued to the new knee, God bless it.

I have said that I don't see a future for this novel after November.  I have three others that I still have a lot of confidence in and they're done.  They need support and promotion and, yes, dang it, an agent.  But I'll give Agatha Jane all the space I can make for her in November.  Then we'll see.

Want to know what she's like -- without revision or aforethought; all wacky the way characters are when nobody's looking?  Here she is. 

Chapter 2

I Know I Am But What Are You?

My name is Agatha Jane Porter. 

Isn’t that the very cross to bear for a girl baby born at the moment in American history when people of discernment were beginning to bestow upon their offspring imaginative, groundbreaking, exceedingly non-traditional names?  Like Moon Unit?

I can understand, though. By the time of my birth, my father had cleverly extricated himself from the family portrait by skipping town.  This scurrilous decampment left my mom entirely unsupervised in the selection of my name. And given the state of mind I’ve extrapolated for her, I get it.  I totally do.

An unconventional woman who let her MA in English Literature molder on a shelf while she cleaned other people’s houses for a living, my mother came into possession of a lot of her clients' cast-offs:  food, clothes, knickknacks.  Books.

  Someone had given her a couple of big crates of battered old detective novels, enough to fill shelves and shelves in her cramped apartment.  Since she was on bed rest for the last three months before I was born, she slipped between their dog-eared pages  for solace and company, and thus became a human incubator for Agatha Christie Appreciation. 

I suppose I got involved, too, marinating as I was in the emotional soup of it all.  A  petri dish experiment, warm, dark, quiet, kinesthetic with imagination. The small spark of a detective, glowing, there in my watery cell, shining with admiration for Hercule Poirot. I might have been the daughter he never had, but thank the good God that I didn’t get his mustaches.  And it’s also probably a good thing I wasn’t a boy.

I have read that we are shaped by our names.  That they offer a template for our development. Guide us, guard us, sculpt our path.  If I’d been named after Marilyn Monroe, for example, or had I been branched out as Moon Unit, I probably wouldn’t have grown up so completely bony and unabashedly plain.

As it was, here I am.  Skinny, smart, bookish.  Wry sense of humor. A writer from birth. Skilled enough to make a living at it.  Shy enough not to have garnered much in the way of fortune and fame. 

My mother had used the mystical power of naming to secure my future independence.  Old maid material for sure, was I. Born to sensible shoes, cardigans, reading glasses and distracted hair styling.  An Agatha Jane through and through.

Almost inevitably, I achieved a solitary middle age. Living in an eccentric Victorian cottage, on a shady, green old street in a rather backwater, Southern college town. Gardening.  Writing.  All in all enjoying the life my mother and Hercule would have wished for me. I found myself at 46 reasonably financially secure, congenitally free-thinking, blessed with the companionship of a supportive cat—named Hastings of course—and­ for the most part free from the perfidy of guys.

My mother’s final words to me, were by way of admonition and entirely typical.  Pale, wasted, unable to speak above a whisper but still sporting the irrepressible twinkle that was her trademark, she said, “Aggie, you’ve lucked out so far.  Remember, my dear one.  A man is a two-face.  A worrisome thing who’ll leave you to sing the blues in the night.  That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.”  She gave me a weak parting grin, breathed, “You’ve been warned,” and closed her eyes.

Content as I was with my world at 46, I might have gone the rest of my life creating fictional murders without ever witnessing an actual one, without ever meeting my own, lost, perfidious sire, or finding my destined Dr. Blues In The Night, if I hadn’t inherited, along with my mother’s independent spirit and love of fiction, my father’s knee.

That's her.  I promise her November.  That's the best I can do right now.  

TMI

I have a bruise exactly this color.

I know. I know.  You could have lived happily for a long time without hearing about that.  But it IS colorful. And as it fades, it marks my return from uncertain footing to almost normal. I have a proud affection for this bruise, which extends from ankle to mid-thigh.  I can't see or even imagine my fabulous new knee, but that bruise is a badge of honor.  Proof that something happened here.

This is the Me. Me. Me. Report for Thursday.  It's been 10 full days since the surgery.  That time while not in any way dreadful and not nearly as painful or unpleasant as one would expect is kind of ... Weird.  It's passed very quickly in a telescope of days.

Here's what I can do now:  I can walk down the driveway all the way to the street.  I can go up and down stairs and it's no big deal.  I can flex my new knee to 92 degrees -- unless, it seems, I just did that and then I can only get about 85 out of it.  Because the new knee says yes, but the old leg says no.  (At least that's my interpretation.)  I can shower.  I can dress myself.  I can't dance.  Don't ask me.    

I suppose Doc Hammer is the only one who can pronounce my operation a success, but I gotta tell you, I'm super pleased.  I feel lucky.  I feel blessed.

I feel lazy.

This report has been brought to you by Ms. 3200 Words in the NaNoWriMo Challenge.  That's some words short.  A few.   Um.  Like. 46,800 short.  That would be 2300 a day?  And in the place where my ambition lies?  There's a big fat old percocet saying, "Hey. Dude. Let's take the day off and read some more of that cool Bill Bryson book."  I'm currently using all my bouncy can-do to bend my knee towards 93 degrees.  But I know that's about to change.  Know. It.

In the meantime, let me take a moment to express incredible gratitude to Bill -- first of all and forever -- for giving a first class demonstration of how to keep that "for worse" and "in sickness" oath he took back in our youth.  He's been "all about me" every bit as much as anyone could ever hope.  And nice about it, too.  John has been 100% solicitous and helpful and kind as well.  (Cujo hasn't been all that great.  He's a cat.  He's been hoping I'll die so he can eat me.  But I'm pretending not to notice that.)  And my friends!  I have such fabulous friends.  Food, flowers, cards, calls, visits, sympathy, empathy, kindness.  You people are the best people anywhere.  And that's a fact.

Thank you.  Everybody.  Thank you.  I feel very nurtured.  I feel very loved.

And bit by bit, as I kick my drug habit, I'm coming back.  First the blog.  Next the NaNo.  Soon the dancing.

But let's never forget that for one brief, shining moment, I had a sunset on my leg!

I Second That Emotion!

 Ow. 

But the good news is, I'm doing very well.  For example, my right knee feels marvelous.  My  head is fine (fuzzy but fine), my arms are quite good, and all my multiple choice of body parts are just peachy.

I'm repaired.  I'm home where the lake is wild and windy.  I'm ready for NaNoWriMo -- and only (yeek) five days behind.  I'll write more about what a uniformly excellent experience I had at The Cleveland Clinic and how Hammer, MD and I are both very satisfied with how things went.  But first a rerun post so I can slam down some words on my lagging novel.  Yay!

My Physical Therapist is coming to visit around noon. I think I shall call her Ms. OOF.

Here's an early post about living next to Lake E from the Like Water For Water blog.

On June 17, 2005 everything changed.

Before we moved to the lake, I dreamed of living near big water. An ocean, maybe. I'd savored a hefty handful of beach vacations, jealously guarding every moment of silent staring. Listening to the tattoo of waves breaking on sand. Tracking gulls and pelicans. Just soaking it up. Back then we lived in a nice old house. It had a nice old garden and small space for a new one which was so terrifically terrible for the planting of anything that I froze just considering what might be done with it. So, we engaged a garden designer and as part of the getting acquainted phase of the plan, she asked what I wanted in a garden. "Uh," I offered tentatively. "I always wanted to live near water." A professional, she didn't say, "Well, maybe you should move." She suggested that a fountain on the garage wall, which was, attractively enough, brick would allow the sound of water at least.

It did. She found us a lion-headed fountain which my neighbor named Bert after Bert Lahr in The Wizard of Oz. Bert got the job done. Provided the sound of water. Lulled me for years in that upland patch of pretty flowers. But I never stopped wanting big water. And it was so tantalizingly near, yet so far away behind the barrier of habit and convenience of living thirty years in the same lovely town. But we did it. On June 17, 2005 we moved to the shore of Lake Erie, ten yards from the water's edge, eight-point-eight miles and a hundred light years from our old familiar place. Bert came along, but when the pump died, we didn't replace it. Now we plant him full of flowers. A kind of reverse role from his old garden self. 

Of the sound of water, there is now a plentiful supply.