Wordswoman

Am I living vicariously? Yeah, a little. :) It's a beautiful thing to be young and bright with all the world opening up in front of you, and Kristen has options to explore that I never knew at her age. But I'm also just looking forward to this mother-daughter time together, the only big trip we've ever taken with just the two of us. Next year it'll be her sister's turn, although I suspect we'll be headed to the opposite coast with that one.

As a nice warmup for the trip, she just got her ACT scores and they're ridiculous. Her SAT scores were very good, but these are crazy good. Knocked it out of the ballpark into the next county good. I'm so proud of her--and all the more so because she doesn't seem to have a big head about it. She just looked pleased, and a little surprised.

"Oh," she said. "Do you think I should take the SAT again?"

No, dear girl, I think you should treat yourself to a chocolate truffle and celebrate!

(And yes, I am poking fun at myself, just a little...)

However, a web site devoted to pictures of cute fuzzy animals is probably not the *best* place, 'kay?

After all the dogs had a turn outside, we took the newly christened "YaYa" into the MVHS playroom to chase tennis balls and savage some chewy toys. She was in heaven. Talk about the body language of glee! I'm not sure that human beings are capable of that kind of full-body happiness. Alas, we can neither wag nor purr, and I think we're the worse for it.

YaYa is still bony; two weeks of fostering weren't enough to put much weight on her. But her eyes were bright, her sores were almost healed, and I saw none of the cowering behavior that broke my heart when we first met. She is already a dog transformed.

She wasn't on the adoption floor yet, and that's probably for the best. I would've been tempted beyond all endurance if she were ready to go home with someone. The cats would NOT approve.

On  related note:

• Scalzi on Why It's Good to Have a Day Job
• Scalzi again with Unasked-For Advice to New Writers About Money
• Justine Larbalestier, Getting paid, or don't quit your day job
• Writing Unboxed blog on Don't Quit Your Day Job

Even if I had a book contract (which would presuppose finishing a book, a somewhat large detail), I wouldn't be quitting my day job. For one thing, my day job takes place at a fine and lovely Midwestern college, where I am surrounded by intelligent, interesting people. All these people help make possible the education of 2000 or so of the smartest young people on the planet.

As day jobs go, this does not suck.

But even if it did, I wouldn't be quitting my day job. Because it also provides:

• Health insurance
• Retirement plan contributions
• A predictable salary
• College tuition benefits for my children

And that is why I'm not quitting my day job.

That, and the fact that I haven't actually finished a novel, much less sold one.

Details, details.

Notes From a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition

So these are the Himalayas.
Mountains racing to the moon.
The moment of their start recorded
on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky.
Holes punched in a desert of clouds.
Thrust into nothing.
Echo—a white mute.
Quiet.

Yeti, down there we've got Wednesday,
bread and alphabets.
Two times two is four.
Roses are red there,
and violets are blue.

Yeti, crime is not all
we're up to down there.
Yeti, not every sentence there
means death.

We've inherited hope —
the gift of forgetting.
You'll see how we give
birth among the ruins.

Yeti, we've got Shakespeare there.
Yeti, we play solitaire
and violin. At nightfall,
we turn lights on, Yeti.

Up here it's neither moon nor earth.
Tears freeze.
Oh Yeti, semi-moonman,
turn back, think again!

I called this to the Yeti
inside four walls of avalanche,
stomping my feet for warmth
on the everlasting
snow.

-Wislawa Szymborska, Poems New and Collected

She was a four-month-old pit bull puppy, so skinny her ribs stood out. There were sores on her little body, probably skin irritations caused by living in her own waste for God knows how long. She was abandoned in the MVHS parking lot at night, in a filthy crate, small and hungry and alone.

When I knelt down in her kennel to put the leash on her for a walk, she cowered, shaking, her tail between her legs but still trying to wag. I carried her outside to a picnic table, where she snuggled in my arms until the trembling passed.

She licked my face.

Tonight the pup is safe, clean, and warm. But somewhere out there is a waste of skin and breath, a soulless excuse for a human being who may still have other animals to abuse.

I wish him ill.

Dad's biopsy report is all bad news. The cancer is now level IV.

There isn't much to say, otherwise.

There's no space in the baby book to record "Baby's First College Visit," but it still feels like a developmental milestone to me.

• Most Common U.S. Surnames (for those times when you suddenly realize all your characters have last names beginning with B). Also includes links to most common/popular boys' and girls' names, and the most popular names historically.
• Parts of a Castle.
• World History Timelines.
• Timeline of Clothing History.
• History of Clothing (including specific pieces of clothing, e.g. earmuffs, bikinis, etc.)
• The Great Idea Finder (history of inventions, inventors, innovations).
• List of Legendary Creatures.

My own attempt is below. Put your own in the comments if you'd like to share.

If a man’s home could truly be his castle, Parker Sims’s castle would have hungry alligators in the moat and sharpened spikes atop the walls. The spikes would be decorated with the heads of neighborhood dogs that barked when Parker wanted to sleep, and neighborhood children who ran across Parker’s manicured lawn. The towers would have arrow slits for archers; the ramparts would have pots for the boiling oil.

But this was a suburbia, so Parker had to make do with a chain-link fence, a Keep Off The Grass sign, and the best Brinks security system money could buy.

(This does not mean all cancer has been removed; that's not really possible with these aggressive tumors that send invisible tendrils out into the surrounding functional brain tissue. It just means that all the obviously abnormal tissue they could remove was cleanly removed, without complications.)

Just closing up after surgery takes a long time. They never show that part in the medical shows on TV; it's not dramatic, and it's not usually the star neurosurgeon doing it. Dad wasn't closed up and moved to recovery until 3:15 p.m., and we couldn't see him for a couple of hours after that, when he was moved to the ICU.  He looked dazed and exhausted, and who could blame him? Heck, I felt dazed and exhausted myself, and I didn't have anesthesia and a hole in my head. But however tired and pained, he sounded like himself when he spoke. He even tried to nag his wife into slipping him a couple of Extra-Strength Tylenol (she wouldn't) or a Tic-Tac (eventually she did) when the nurses weren't looking. Which is totally Dad, so it was oddly reassuring.

Around 8:00 p.m. we saw Dad's surgeon heading down the hall, interns trailing him like the tail of a comet. This would be the same neurosurgeon who talked to us at 7:00 a.m. and probably made his hospital rounds before that. He seemed pleased with Dad's condition.

My brother Perry and I stayed a couple of hours more, but since we'd gotten up at 4:00 a.m. we were fading fast. So around 8:30 p.m. we called it a night, went to dinner, and got home to bed. I barely remember lying down. I think my husband had to throw a blanket over me because I hadn't had the energy to do it myself.

We'll be heading back to the hospital soon, hoping to hear more of a report from the surgeon and/or pathology.