Help. Send Ice. Send Ice Packs. Send Winter.

So here is what it is like in Arkansas when your air conditioning has not worked for three days.

Number One: Every linoleum floor is sticky or else literally covered with a fine slimy layer of condensation. Mopping this up will only work briefly. This humidity-induced slime, by the way? Oh my what a fine stench.

Number Two: Every thing begins to smell, almost at once. You can't leave garbage in the pail all day, or milk in a cup by the sink. Deal with that shit pronto.

This Post Comes To Y9o From The Stratosphere

Good news, y'all.

I saw the surgeon today! And wow. Did he give me some good drugs or what.

No, wait. That's not how I meant to start this.

But yeah! Give it up for doctors who do give sufficient pain medication.

Also: I have to say this was the best clinic experience I've ever had.

Listen to this: I walked in there with a 9:00 a.m. appointment and, bitches, not only was I back with doctor by 9:00 a.m., I had already -- by then -- had an X-Ray done, talked to two nurses, and been whisked through receiving and insurance. I mean, yowza.

Every step of the way, also, each nurse and tech led me directly to the next step; and each one was very kind about doing so. And when I got to the examination room, the tech that led me there brought up the X-Rays I had done (about three minutes before) on the computer in that examine room. It was like medicine as art, I have to say.

Or, you know, like seeing medicine done the way it ought to be done in the 21st century.

Then the surgeon appeared, maybe three minutes after the nurse had left me, and talked to me about being an English professor, and then he showed me the X-Rays and told me what they might mean, and what they might not, and then he outlined what we could do, and then he asked what I wanted to do.

Then he scheduled an arthroscopy --what we decided to do -- for (get this) six days from now.

And told me he'd call in script for pain meds, no problem.

I left the clinic thinking I must have fallen into a alternate universe.

This can't be American medicine?

Tidings of Great Joy!

My craptop caught a virus and I did too!

Plus it's finals week here. So as you can imagine it has been much wailing and gnashing around the delagar household. However! Dr. Skull was able to extract my data from the craptop before I surrendered it to our tech support guys (who did, by the way, fix it -- killed the virus, mended the craptop yet again) and while the craptop was in the shop let me use his MacBook -- which I used to finish a draft of Triple Junction. Yay me!

Now it is winter here and I am still sick as shit, though the computer is mended. I am grading papers and drinking NyQuil. The cat is sleeping on my feet. The Hanukkah lights (yes, I am serious -- we found some at the Harps, they are multicolored Stars of David) are shining in the window. I am sipping ginger ale and soon it will be winter break. If I felt better I would be utterly content.

Yay!

I took Athena's suggestion (from comments, here) and suggested to IT that maybe they could give me a loaner craptop with my data mirror'd up; which they did, over the weekend, and called me this morning, telling me I could come and get it whenever.

Now I am back in business.

Yay me!

(TNX, Athena!)

Fred at Slacktivist

Fred at Slacktivist is why I haven't quite given up on Christians yet.

Here's another out-of-the ballpark post from him.

Aw....

This is so sweet.

Kittenz!

We have achieved kitten!

Her name is Jasper.

Sadly, I do not know how to post pictures (:<) but this image, stolen from google.images, is very close to Our Jasper.

The kid says I should tell you that Jasper is so cute!  And smart!  And cleaner than any dog we have ever had!  

As for me, I have to tell I have never seen anything make the kid happier than getting a kitten has.  She's like a kid on crack cocaine.  

Kittens = crack cocaine for 12 year old girls.  Who knew?

Why I Love Fred at Slacktivist

Number 7010, probably.

In April When The Showers Are Sweet...

...I spend one weekend doing taxes and cleaning house and boxing up excess toys, books, and clothing to give to the poor.  The weather at this point in Arkansas is usually sunny and cool, so the work can be done with windows open, and when I am done, everything is so dustless and spare and with the doom of how much we will have to send the Feds and the State coffers no longer hanging like a axe over my head (we never have a nickel to spare, ever, so that is always a giant axe) confirmed, a clean house is immensely helpful.

Not to mention the sunshine and clear breeze.

This year with all the pollen it is not such a clear breeze -- BUT!

President Obama's tax cuts came through for us!

Well, probably our poverty helped some.  We made two thousand (actual, not adjusted) dollars and change less this year than we did last year; that and the tax cuts meant we got a sizable refund this year, rather than (as was true every single year under Mr. Bush) having to make a  sizable (and I am talking in the 2000/dollar range, when you add state and federal payments together) payment -- and yes, that was a sizable payment in addition to what had already been always deducted from our paychecks.

So!  Good news!

I have to say the relief is enormous, as we have utterly no savings left, and have been, for the past several months, doing the balancing act to get through the last ten days of each month.  (You know that act:  which bill can we put off paying?  Which utility company won't cut us off if we don't pay the full amount and which will?  Is there anything in the cupboard we can eat so that we don't have to go to the store for another two days?  Ooo, look, what's this?  Grits from two years ago?  Do you think those are still good?  What if we cook them up and mix them with an egg, will that count as dinner?)  I've already raided the kid's piggy bank, back when the washing machine broke down, and both of the emergency credit cards are topped off.  What we were going to do if we owed money on our taxes, we had no idea.

Now?  Money coming in the mail!  Hot damn!

We can buy shoes!

Yay Obama!

Lookit This!

Conversation at the delagar Household

Herr Dr. Delagar: (Inspecting the contents of the refrigerator): Who's cooking tonight?  If it's me, I could make that lamb tangine.  We've got the stuff.

Me: (Reading at the table, drinking coffee): --- ----

HDD: Am I cooking tonight?

Me: If I'm cooking, we're having peanut butter toast.

HDD: (Shut the fridge): Lamb tangine it is. 

Well!

And this!

Under the legislation, federal subsidies to private student loan lenders would stop and the government's role in lending would increase -- creating billions of dollars in projected savings that would go largely in grants to needy students.

When Obama starts, he goes, I guess.

Oh, Wow

They passed the bill.

(Re Stupak, btw.)

Snow!

The weather guy once again predicts snow for our little river valley.  Hah, I no longer believe his coy promises.  It will be more drizzle and sleet.

Meanwhile, Herr Dr. Delagar made the best Sole Meuniere I have ever eaten for dinner last night, even if he did have to use cod rather than sole, sole not being available in Pork Smith.

(What is available in Pork Smith? So glad you asked.  We went out yesterday afternoon to use the kid's book card, at BooksAMillion, that being nearly the only bookstore in town, but of course it did not have the book she wanted.  Six rows of Bibles of various sorts, yes, four shelves of Science Fascism, mais oui, but a copy of Cressida Cowell's new book, no.  Though I was interested to discover two shelves of shrink-wrapped Yaoi among the manga.  Hmm!)

We all have mild colds, relics of our travels.  I plan to spend the day working on my SF stories and drinking coffee.  The kid is playing with her paper kitties (she has drawn dozens of small paper cats, like paper dolls, only cats, which she keeps in an empty Russell Stover box, and constructs elaborate narratives around.  Lately I find 3 or 4 of these kitties in the hallway, outside her room.  "There are kitties in the hallway," I comment.  "Those are the bad kitties," she tells me sternly.) as well as keeping up with her RPGs and online chatgroups and RW friends.  She has a very busy life for an eleven year old, and is deeply distressed that school takes up again on Monday.

"Maybe I'll be too sick to go," she said hopefully, as I gave her her cold medicine this morning.

Goodbye 2009!

Here's hoping for a better 2010.

It's cold and drizzly here, and we are -- well, not as broke as we have ever been (that would be five years ago) but pretty rotten broke: down to one vehicle, scraping by in the last week of every month by digging quarters out of the kid's bank and hunting through old coat pockets; deciding each month which bills we don't absolutely have to pay (for instance, the water company will let you slide with a partial payment every now and then, we have found, whereas the electric company will cut your ass right off); doing without the dentist, not filling prescriptions, or refilling prescriptions only sometimes; keeping our heat at sixty-four; and we are middle class.  We have jobs, we have health insurance.

I think sometimes what life on the working class level, or the life of my students, is like.

On the other hand: we live two blocks from the library and the post office, three blocks from the grocery.  We do have jobs, even if Herr Doctor Delagar's job is still only part-time.  None of us are really seriously ill.  (No one is dying, as I tell HDD frequently.) 

Things could be worse.

And maybe 2010 will be better.  Here's hoping.

So Sad

Another rejection.

But a nice one this time -- from Strange Horizons, saying good things, and yet; and the reason they rejected the story (it's my lizard story) is exactly the right reason.  The big harking hole at the center of the story.  Grr.  Why can't I fix that big harking hole?

In other news: here's why Mamas have trouble being writers.  Today is my writing day, the day when I have no classes until 5.30 p.m.  Instead of writing at 7.00 a.m. this morning what was I doing?  Cutting leaves out of brown and red construction paper and stapling them to the kid's shirt.  B/c she is Fall in her group's weather display, that is why.  And?  Instead of prepping for this yesterday, she was RPGing with her buds.

Then I was packing her lunch, and making her breakfast, and running out to the car in my bare feet waving her retainer ("You forgot your retainer!" I was hollering, as she and Herr Dr. Delagar were driving away, how amusing for the neighbors.)

Don't I like being a mother.

Hurray!

The guy came and fixed the dryer. It dries so speedy quick now, it is amazing!

Now if only we could afford to replace the kid's computer...and get the other car fixed....and get a kitty (the kid forced me to add that bit)...we would almost be middle class again.

October, Yay!

October is absolutely my most favorite of all months out of the year, for just such a day as we are having today -- dark grey and chilly, and now, in the late afternoon, a steady sluice of cold rain.  I am drinking coffee and reading Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs for about the 10th time, wrapped in my favorite deep green thermal shirt, watching the weather and enjoying myself enormously.

I like February too, mind you, and grey icy days then; but February is on the downhill slide toward summer, and how I hate summer.  October means winter is coming, months and months of dark and cold ahead: my sort of days, stacks of them, just like this one, all in a row.

It's heaven.

Bookshelf Update

Everything is on the shelves -- well! All the shelves we currently have, which still leaves six boxes in the room where we keep the TV and the kid's bins of Legos and blocks.  (She's not quite old enough to give up blocks, and Herr Dr. Delagar and she still go on Lego sprees, frequently.)

I've ordered two bookshelves from Etsy, which do you know about Etsy?  Way cool site I have only just discovered.  I ordered one of these and one which is gone because I must have ordered the last one.  Now I'm waiting for them to arrive, but even when they do, we'll still have (I estimate) four boxes of books stacked along the TV room wall.

We're going to sell some, I think, to a store in town that buys used books; and donate some to the public library; and give some to TOLP's kids; and some to Zelda and Mouse, if they want them, and some to the students at our university.  At the end of this process, I hope, I hope, we will be without books anywhere but on the shelves...oh, yeah, and the six crates in the closet. Um. Erm.  Well.

But you should see how tidy the front room looks!  Plus!  I vacuumed everywhere (except the TV room) yesterday evening.  Not just around things as I have been doing for about six months.

My OCD is so happy.

Fall/Not Whining

It's fall here, or trying to be.  Cooler weather, trees that have a small edge of red leaves along one border.  I'm trying to work on my lizard story (I write SF about lizards and frogs these days, it's very odd) and not sink into a slough of despond about why should I write anyway.  The weather is helping.

Also!  We are up to N on the shelves.  Though it is obvious our weeding out and boxing up of books has not been thorough enough.  Or else we need more shelves.  A bigger house?  To move to the practice of using Kindle instead?

I am tired of cooking, and Herr Dr. Delagar is too busy.  So we are living on Nutella with a spoon from a jar and apples, also diet Coke black with rum mixed in.  This cannot be such a good thing, I am fairly certain.