Sigh

I apologize for skipping yesterday; I was so tired that I fell asleep on myself and couldn’t focus enough to eat, let alone type!  I had an early appointment with my nurse, and whenever I have an early session, I have difficulty sleeping as I dream that I’ve slept through my alarm, so I wake up very early, don’t rest, and, well… you know the rest!  Jerry got a long walk yesterday as my angel of a support worker came early to take him for a run.  He came back completely parched, then moved onto my lap where he spent the better part of today again.  Don was not feeling at all well yesterday, and was up in the night being sick.  He’s a little better today, and was actually very hungry, which is an improvement over the last few days.  He’s again glued to sports, so I’m hopeful that things will continue to improve!

My nurse commented that my blood pressure readings are almost identical one week to the next, varying by maybe 1 - 2 points.  We’ve started doing dual measurements just to check; the first reading was 102/65.  Then we used the other sphygmomanometer to double check the readings and got 103/65.  She’s also wondering why (as am I, frankly) I’ve suddenly developed calluses on my heels in an area that’s not under pressure — I don’t wear shoes with backs when I’m at home, and the calluses are on the outside of my foot, where they’re not in any shoes or anything.  We have no idea why, but the area is distinctly hard.  We’ve reluctantly concluded that this is one of “those things” that happen with no satisfactory explanation.  It’s been a bit muggy this week, so I found it a little challenging to breathe easily.  Most annoying!

I am starting to realize that I’ve lost a lot of my “childlike sense of wonder” when I’m watching / reading many things intended for children, especially tweens are young teens.  Some of it is a carry over from my own youth, but some is more stringent now.  I remember as a child watching various superhero cartoons and the young child would be told, “stay here, we’ll be right back,” and not 2 minutes after the adults leave, he (usually a boy) would be sneaking off to “join in the fun,” and getting into needless danger, needing to be rescued.  I remember rolling my eyes and being annoyed at this flagrant disobedience (tells you how much of a rule follower I was!) I was rereading some other childhood stories, and the casual disregard that the kids had for promises — which had bothered me in my youth — makes me want to write new variants of the story to assure appropriate consequences for their behaviour.  I’ve got similar challenges with so-called “chick lit” or “chick flicks” where our heroine goes into a tailspin because she’s attracted to a man who is not her significant other, and has an existential crisis because she thinks of kissing another man!  Gawsp!  The infidelity!  I was banned from “girls’ movie night” for snorting in an uncomplimentary fashion at a 20-minute arc of moaning, “Oh, he’s so attractive, I can’t stop thinking I’d like to kiss him…”  I think that those scenes are probably written by men who’d like to think that we’re that frail that our psyches collapse when exposed to an attractive man!  Honestly, Jane Austen and the Brontes didn’t have these meltdowns… their women exercised a lot more control of their romantic yearnings.  I’m wondering, as an exercise for students, if anyone wants to do a comparison of how men and women write romantic scenes for the opposite sex.  Not sex scenes — those are too easy — but scenes involving actual feelings.  I exclude from this the mass produced “romance” novels where his manly chest is broad and his chin is strong while she’s delicate, petite and extraordinarily beautiful but unaware of her charm.  Their formulaic “boy (aged between 30 - 38) meets girl who is under 25, girl thinks he’s insufferable, he persists in his pursuit, they have a misunderstanding, he kisses her forcefully and she melts into his muscular arms and we fade out into the sunset following their sudden wedding and her newly-discovered pregnancy” becomes boring and unrealistic.  We won’t even talk about the Hallmark movies which are just so… cookie cutter!

Yes, yes, I know.  I have a strong preference for science fiction/fantasy, where romance is so far down the list of things going on that it might as well not exist.  I’ve gone back down the rabbit hole of my childhood favourites, like Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, Robert Silverberg, Frank Herbert, etc none of whom wrote a credible, strong female character.  I should be ashamed of myself for still enjoying them, but IMHO a mark of a good book is that you can get lost in the story even years later.  Some more recent writers, especially Robert Jordan, did a more credible job of writing women.  I have found that some of the women writers — who wrote as men — have wonderfully compelling characters, with balanced, fully formed women and believable men.  They wrote as men because their publishers thought that the public would avoid writing by a woman… such a narrow view!  All of this will probably communicate that I’m again losing myself in my books (too many sports) and loving the characters and stories.  

I’m off now, as the boys are both napping on the sofa and I will take advantage of quiet time!  Good night!