Lakeside Amusement Park -- Friday, August 20, 2010

A friend gave me eight tickets for unlimited rides at Lakeside Amusement Park in Denver.  Lakeside has been around since 1908 or some such crazy thing and it was so much fun.  It very much had the feel of a county fair.  Fiona and I were able to go with our four housemates -- Alex, Beth, Mikaela, & Sofia -- as well as our friends Angela and Isaac.  It was so lovely -- an entire evening free of worries and full of laughter. Thanks to Beth and Angela for the pics!

Back:  Isaac, Angela, Mikaela, Beth, me, Alex.  Front: Sofia, Fiona.

I wanted to ride some rides but I wasn't sure how it would affect my injuries.  In the picture above you can see my solution -- a trick I also used in labor -- a nice loose mouth with a low groan -- kept my muscles nice and loose.  :)

Back:  Beth, me, Alex, Mikaela.  Front: Sofia, Fiona, Isaac.

 

Love the light in this one.

Book Beginnings -- The Roar by Emma Clayton

Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme hosted by Becky at Page Turners. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you're reading. If you like, share with everyone why you do, or do not, like the sentence.

Cover of Roar

I read The Roar by Emma Clayton for Tattooed Books' YALSA Challenge.   First sentence:

The sun was setting over the Atlantic, and as it ran like molten gold into the waves a girl in a Pod Fighter ripped through the scene like graffiti sprayed across a landscape painting.

I just didn't love this book.  It's 481 pages and I found myself plodding through it.    I don't even think I'll pick up the next one in the series, assuming there is one -- and that is rare for me, to not continue with a series. Have others read this and had a different experience? 

Religious Freedom -- Jon Stewart tells it like it is

With thanks to LKT.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Municipal Land-Use Hearing Update
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

W.W.W. Wednesdays -- August 25, 2010

To play along, just answer the following three questions……

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you will read next?

Currently reading:

Cover via Amazon

Cover of Roar

• The God of the Hive by Laurie R. King
• The Roar by Emma Clayton
• Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris by R.L. Travers

Recently finished:

Cover via Amazon

Cover of Faithful Place: A Novel

• Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error by Kathryn Schulz
•  Faithful Place:  A Novel  by Tana French

Up next:

Image via Wikipedia

• The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
•  

Teaser Tuesdays -- Faithful Place by Tana French

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by Miz B of Should Be Reading and asks you to :
1. Grab your current read
2. Open to a random page
3 . Share 2 "teaser" sentences also citing the title of the book and the author and in that way people can have great recommendations if they like the "teaser".
4. Please avoid spoilers!

Cover of Faithful Place: A Novel

The rose-colored glasses aren't your style, Frank.  You must have been really crazy about this one, were you? p. 94, Faithful Place by Tana French

I've read Tana French's other books (In the Woods & The Likeness) and liked them. Faithful Place goes even deeper into the sorrows of human relationships and the disappointments those relationships bring.  The story of Detective Frank Mackey's return to the neighborhood of his childhood had just enough echoes of my current situation (you know, minus the whole being set in Ireland and featuring two murders twenty-two years apart) to make a very bittersweet, evocative, and poignant read for me -- though not necessarily in a negative way.  (Run-on sentence much?)

While Faithful Place could certainly be considered to be in the thriller/mystery/page turner genre, French's character development and skill at setting the scene makes it so much more.  Frank's dread of getting pulled back into the downward spiral of his family and neighborhood of his youth is counter-balanced by his almost unacknowledged hope that maybe things could be different -- while almost certainly knowing that they won't be.  The idea of seemingly small and simple things that we do when we are young reverberating many years later certainly reverberated in my own mind -- as did the hopelessness of ever really making things right.  ". . . everything you believe is up for grabs, every ground rule can change on a moment's whim, and the dealer always, always wins." (247)

Frank's relationship with his ex-wife, Olivia, and his daughter, Holly, ring true.  "Her voice had softened.  In all the world, the last think I needed that night was Olivia being nice to me.  It rippled my bones like water, soothing and treacherous." (30-31)  Speaking of his daughter,

"She's completely surrounded, from every angle, by people telling her that reality is one hundred percent subjective:  if you really believe you're a star then you deserve a record contract whether or not you can sing for shit, and if you really believe in weapons of mass destruction then it doesn't actually matter whether they exist or not, and fame is the be-all and end-all because you don't exist unless enough people are paying attention to you.  I want my daughter to learn that not everything in this world is determined by how often she hears it or how much she wants it to be true or how many other people are looking." (153).

This is the second book I've read recently (see last week's teaser) where things go very wrong after a phone call is not returned.  Let me tell you, it makes me want to keep my phone by my side at all times and never, never ignore it!

14 months since being hit by a car -- August 23, 2010

Image by Chris and Jenni via Flickr

Though this picture isn't me, I can remember the experience.  :)

I was hit by a car, on June 23rd, 2009, while walking across the street (in the crosswalk, with a green light and walk signal).  Ambulance came and I spent several hours in the emergency room.  No broken bones, was able to walk out of the ER, but continued having pain -- lots of soft tissue kinds of stuff -- hand, wrist, shoulder, neck, knee.  At the beginning, making the motion to close a ziploc bag hurt, I switched to a small purse and small water bottle because otherwise the weight was too much for me, and I was easily exhausted.  Mid-fall things began improving medically, and continued to do so slowly and steadily for a while.   I don't have health insurance and that has added an additional struggle on top of everything else.

Heartfelt thanks to those of you who've been walking with me these past 14 months. 

I've been trying to write journal entries periodically with the thought that they may be helpful if we need to go to court while at the same time giving me the chance to think about my progress.  Here's the latest one.

Fourteen months since the accident -- I continue to realize just how much the effects from it are still with me on a day to day basis.  In the past four months I have been getting closer to being as good as I'm going to get, so to speak, body-wise.  My physical therapist released me from care, saying that she had done as much as she could do for me.  My original doctor has moved to a new office and I have started seeing Dr. Pham.  She says that I will never be back to 100% -- that I may have some 100% days but that I will also have 50% days.  Simple daily activities are so much harder now.  Carrying my daughter's car seat, washing dishes, pulling wet clothes out of a dryer -- even writing, if I do it for too long -- cause pain in my wrist, my shoulder, my forearm, and/or my neck.

I know that I'm so lucky that the accident wasn't worse than it was -- so lucky.  And yet the impact it continues to have on my day-to-day life is significant.  I am able to do so much more than I was able to do directly after the accident, but I know that often, if I try to accomplish too much in a given day, I will be in pain later on.  I continue to take two different pain medications and sometimes wonder what will happen when I stop taking them --- if there will be a resurgence of a higher pain level.

I saw the massage therapist on Thursday and he said my body is allowing him to work much deeper than it ever would have 8 months ago.

I continue to struggle to pay my medical bills and field phone calls from creditors and see my doctor every 2-4 weeks.  I have an appointment with her tomorrow and I'll be interested to see what she has to say. 

Images I found on Google Images last Sunday (while looking for something else) that spoke to me in one way or another

Kara Thrace, I still think you rock, but I'm trying be less of a trainwreck than you.

I think of this web comic often when I'm online.  :)

Next year I really want a cake with candles for my birthday....Or maybe this year for my half birthday!!