Playing catch-up

Captain's Log, Stardate 11.10.2005

Lots has happened in the past few days.

ACL:

I had my doctor's appointment on Monday and it turns out the ACL in my right knee is torn. I'll be having surgery on November 23rd.

Hopefully this time, it'll be better. Last time I had surgery, the doctor prescribed a pain medication related to codeine and it made me massively sick to my stomach. That was worse than the pain of the surgery. I also had horrible blistering because my body wasn't draining the excess fluid, so it forced its way through my epithelial layer into skin blisters.

This time, the doctor is inserting a small pump under the skin that will dispense local anesthesia to hopefully dull the pain. I'll only be taking ibuprofen and Tylenol as painkillers. I'm also hoping that if I massage my leg and calf, the circulation will drain away the excess fluid instead of forming blisters.

So basically, please pray for my surgery and my recovery. :)

Mt. Hermon:

Yesterday, I drove down to Mount Hermon campgrounds (near Santa Cruz) which was hosting a small Christian writers mentoring clinic. Meredith Efken had called and asked me to go surprise our friend Randy Ingermanson with a stuffed tiger (for his Tiger Marketing program) and Trader Joe's dark chocolate. I also got to see my friends Marilyn Hilton and Cyndy Salzmann, who were attending the clinic.

They snuck me into dinner (which had these phenomenal sautéed green beans, I ate like two servings of it) and also into the evening keynote session, which was terrific. The speaker encouraged us to pursue failure--to not be afraid of it, to take risks rather than writing what sounds like everything else being published.

Randy introduced me to James Scott Bell, which was totally awesome because I love his posts on Charis Connection and I've been listening to his suspense workshop on CD from a previous Mt. Hermon writers conference. I also saw my agent Wendy Lawton, who introduced me to her boss Janet Kobobel Grant.

And I got a chance to talk to Karen Ball and ask how her dad was doing, since he'd had some health problems at the ACFW conference in Nashville this past September. It was neat because she actually remembered me out of the hundreds of women she met at that conference. That's so cool, when a multi-published, best-selling author remembers my name.

It was so invigorating to be around writers, even if only for a few hours. God so blessed me with the time I spent there. I even had light traffic both to and from Santa Cruz.

Sick:

Well, maybe I wasn't entirely blessed. I caught a cold. It hit really fast--one second I was fine and happy at Mt. Hermon. The next I was driving home and I had an itchy throat. I drank water but it didn't go away.

Within three hours, I was full-blown sick--sore throat, dizziness, weakness. I took Airborne, ibuprofen, vitamins, cough drops, and Echinacea--the works. Today I feel okay, but I'm high on the ibuprofen I'm taking every four hours, and I've already gone through a bag of Ricola. I'm drinking dilute green tea, too. Gotta love that Zojirushi electric hot water pot I bought--one of my best purchases from Amazon.com.

The bummer is that I don't know yet if I'll be able to make it to Dineen's birthday party tomorrow. I was really looking forward to it--when am I not looking forward to Mexican food?--but I don't know how I'll be feeling and I also don't want to get more people sick with whatever this is.

Alphasmart:

I bought one! I saw an Alphasmart 3000 on eBay for $100 (no tax or S&H fees), so I got it. I'm wincing at the money since I don't really have extra right now, but I'm so excited I got it. I'm hoping the small screen will enable me to shut off the internal editor and go into right brain mode with more ease.

I still need to buy a cable to connect it to my PC, but I think I can get one at Fry's for much cheaper than direct from the manufacturer. This will also be nice because my ancient laptop keeps fritzing on me--the trackpad buttons will freeze and the screen blips every so often.

Judging:

I was asked to do discrepancy judging on an entry for a contest, so I spent a few hours on that today. It really makes me think, because I have to point out what's not working and explain exactly why. I think it's making me into a better writer, because it's forcing me to analyze writing in detail.

Suspense manuscript:

Still revising. The sad thing is that I start thinking of other things I should add to give it more cohesion and richness, which only makes things more complicated for me as I'm trying to weave these other threads into place. This sickness isn't helping any. I was hoping to be done by tomorrow, but it looks like I won't have it finished until next week sometime. I'll really have to push.