by Christine | Life, Observations, Writing
My husband came into the house yesterday evening and made this pronouncement: “We’re ripping everything out of the yard and only planting boysenberries.” I would like to say I was shocked, but I totally understood.
Once you taste a fresh-from-the-vine boysenberry, there is no going back. You will buy the ones in the store, but they never match up to that burst of sun and summer and berry-goodness that is the fresh boysenberry.
Of course, this is true, too of tomatoes and apricots and strawberries and oh, all manner of garden goodness. To this day, I can’t buy an apricot in the store because as a child we had a productive apricot tree. So much so that mom & dad would make apricot jam, stewed apricots (OH YUM!), apricot pie…whatever we didn’t manage to eat (or the birds didn’t get) all got saved, somehow, to make winter brighter with its fresh, fruity flavor. Store apricots just aren’t the same – the juice isn’t as sweet, the flesh tends to be a bit mealy, and over all they are a disappointment.
Tomatoes are one area where I will bite the bullet and buy in the store when I’m not growing my own.
(But come on. I mean, doesn’t that cherry tomato look DELISH?) I have a confession – I make sure I eat the first ripe cherry tomato, every season. That burst of flavor, mingled with the scent of tomato plant on my hands, is, every year, the herald of summer.
I do love the flowers that summer brings, too. Every year for the past few years, I’ll get what I call “volunteer” sunflowers – ones I haven’t planted, but were remnants of seeds from previous summers. I never rip them out before they’ve grown; I like to believe they are the earth’s way of saying “thank you” to me, so the least I can do is help them grow.
These two sunflowers are about twelve feet tall.
And then there’s the artichoke. Once we’ve eaten our fill of artichokes, we tend to ignore the plant for awhile – to our dismay, overnight it seems the artichokes open up too much to be tasty. Then we do our duty to the birds and bees everywhere, and let them flower.
Stunning, isn’t it? How many bees do you see in this photo?
Here’s the whole plant, showing lots of flowering artichokes.
Yeah, spending time in the garden – even when it’s just weeding and watering – always seems to settle my spirit. Taking photos of my garden is just another delight, especially now that I can get photos from my camera and into the blog, lol! But my favorite thing to do in summer? It’s just to sit in the garden around sunset, drinking wine or a Between the Sheets, talking with my husband as he noodles around on the guitar. Pure heaven.
On the writing front, DEMON HUNT is 99% complete – the publisher just needs to finish the formatting, then once more for strictly a format edit and it’ll be good to go. I hope to have ARCs this time around, so I can get some reviews prior to the launch but we shall see.
One last photo – this one was taken at a winery in Paso Robles. It reminds me of a painting by Monet, and I am very proud of it.
All photos in this blog posting were taken by me.
The year is rapidly approaching the Summer Solstice. What is your favorite way to enjoy summer?
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Thanks so much for visiting and leaving comments – I love hearing from you! Until next time – and remember to drink responsibly!
by Christine | Life, Observations
Episode 1: Does My Uterus Make Me Look Fat?
I had an illuminating gynecology visit last week. I had to go, because I had originally gone to my GP for blood in my stool; he examined me and said he thought I had fibroids in my uterus. I had a CT scan, which confirmed a diagnosis of “an enlarged myomatous uterus”. My bowel, as well as all my other organs, were peachy fine. The GP set me up with a Gynocologist and a Gastro-intestine doc, just to be on the safe side.
This post is about the Gyno visit, and the state of my uterus. (I’m thinking at this point the GI post will be positively tame. Tame, I tell you!)
So, I met this nice doc, probably in her mid to late 30’s. We talked for almost twenty, maybe thirty minutes. After she went through my symptoms (I’ll spare you the details), I then complained that for the past three or four years, when I turn sideways, I am not thin. I’ve always – always been thin sideways, and not so much straight on.
But I’m not thin anymore when I turn sideways. I’ve gained weight, but it’s out of proportion to how I’ve been eating. Even with The Menopause hovering on my personal horizon, there is no real reason for the weight gain.
Plus, my energy is low. I wake up a lot at night, I have to pee ALL THE TIME, and I get indigestion – something I never have had, with the exception of the two times I’ve been pregnant.
Pregnant. That’s it. I feel – pregnant. But ugly-pregnant, not glowy-pregnant. I feel as though my bladder is being pressed on constantly. I often have a bit of difficulty breathing, and I’ll get odd aches and pains in my abdomen. Fibroids in the uterus. So technically I am pregnant, but with fibroids. Swell.
Plus, my periods. (Okay, I’m not sparing you the details.) The first couple of days, it’s like Niagra Falls. Every hour on the hour I need to change my extra-super-duper tampon. At night I have to wear a huge overnight pad along with my extra-super-duper tampon. And even then, there are mornings where I’ll wake up and find I’ve bled all over the sheets. Yeah – that makes a woman feel sexy.
My doctor was FABULOUS. Prior to the physical exam, she told me there are options – drug-wise, I can go on a drug that is fairly new here in the States and kind of expensive, but I would take it just for the two or three really heavy days of my period, 3 times a day, to cut the blood flow in half.
Or, I could go on the Pill, which would also lessen the blood flow, but with hormones involved, I’d have to go off them on a yearly basis for a few months in order to see where I am – because there is no indication of WHEN I’ll actually go into full-blown Menopause. It could be four months, or four years. There’s just no telling, and since I don’t have sisters…no help there.
Surgically, there’s an ablation that could be done (I think it’s called a hysteroscopy – where they go in vaginally). They can remove the fibroids via a laparoscopy, too – through a small incision near the belly button. Or they can go into my uterus through the veins in my groin to cauterize the blood vessels that are feeding the fibroids, which would at least cut off their blood supply. And the fourth option, of course, is a hysterectomy.
So.
She then proceeded to the physical exam. And the minute she put her hand on my abdomen, she said “oh wow.” Um, okay.
Apparently the reason I am wide when I turn sideways is because my uterus is huge. Or, as she put it, if I had come in to see her and I was 25 instead of 52, she’d ask me if I were pregnant. Because to her, my body feels about 5 months pregnant. Let me repeat that. FIVE. MONTHS. PREGNANT.
Yeah. Knew it. Okay, but there’s a bright spot – it’s not FAT! It’s my fibroid-filled uterus making me look big. That’s a plus, right? Right? Sigh.
So, the surgical options have narrowed because my uterus is so damned HUGE. (She didn’t even see the need to do a vaginal ultrasound – she could FEEL it. And then, suddenly, so could I.)
Surgically, I could go with the cauterizing of the blood vessels in my uterus to cut off the fibroids. But this will not get rid of the fibroids – it will merely stop them from growing (which would be, I’ll admit, a total blessing).
OR: I could go with the hysterectomy (with a low bikini incision). My ovaries would be left in, because I don’t have any family history of cancer at all and, according to the doc, our ovaries have an important role to play as we age. They don’t know what it is, exactly, but it’s important.
This last option would give me my figure back (such as it is). The medication options will help with the blood flow, but it won’t shrink the fibroids into non-existence, from what I understand. (Even after menopause, the fibroids don’t just go away, and I’ll be my normal, slightly fist-sized uterus girl again. Oh, no. That, of course, would be too easy.)
When I told my husband, the first thing I did was help him feel my abdomen. Almost from hipbone to hipbone, from pubic bone to just below my belly button – my uterus fills my abdomen. Considering it’s supposed to be roughly the size of my fist, it’s beyond ginormous. I feel awkward, ugly, huge and impossible.
Tom, my love, wants me to do whatever will give me the best long-term health outcome. He doesn’t care if I don’t get my figure back. (I think a main part of it is he doesn’t want me going in for any surgery, at all. I can totally understand that.) But me? I’m tired of feeling huge. Of being 5 months pregnant. I’ve been this way, steadily growing, for four years now. And I’m tired.
I don’t know what I’ll end up doing. I’ve got research to do. The doc took a biopsy of the fibroids and we should get the results back in a few days. Then we’ll sit down, the three of us, and figure out what our next step should be.
Why am I writing about this here? Because it didn’t dawn on me that when a GP doc gave me an exam in 2010, that she might be wrong when she pressed on my uterus and said, “What’s your bladder doing there?” I’ll never know how different things might have been, if this had been caught in 2010.
Things change in our bodies as we women age, and we need to be alert to the changes. The Niagra Falls part of my period didn’t really get bad until about 3-4 years ago. That should have been my first clue. But I wasn’t paying any attention. I had assumed that everything was as it should be.
I was wrong. Learn from my mistakes. Pay attention to your health. It’s important, and no one else can possibly do it for you.
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Thanks for stopping by! I love your opinions. If you’ve got (or had) a uterus, talk to me – what do you think about this? And if you’re a guy, what do YOU think?
by Christine | Life, Observations
At times, I wonder why my life can’t be more like those stories I hear on National Public Radio. Their guests, during interviews, always have cultured, radio-perfect voices pitched at just the right timbre so as to soothe and inform. Authors, or professors, or political experts; it doesn’t seem to matter. Maybe these guests are given a short training session on how to speak for the radio?
Then there are those non-news oriented stories, which are read aloud by the writer in front of an audience. They are inevitably perfectly captured bits of time, a distilled essence of the writer that makes the listener smile in recognition, or weep for the brave person speaking. Often there will be laughter and tears engendered in the listener during the same sentence.
The writer is always wry, dry, and terribly witty; and maybe a little, but not too, precious. They hold up their own quirks and foibles for us to laugh at, as well as the shortcomings of those around them. They spill their secrets out into the world without a care for who (whom?) may be listening. Secrets of a love affair gone awry, or the challenges they face with an arm that doesn’t work, or the constant heartbreak when they think of the child they had to give up for adoption, or the ugliness of living as a civilian in a war zone. Invariably there is a perfect sound bite to capture their experiences.
(Alas, I don’t have a picture of a sound bite. Enjoy the photo of a summer day at the beach. Imagine yourself in the chair, with a loved one next to you, beverage of choice in hand. Ahhh….)
thanks to projectgraduateschool.wordpress.com for the image.
(Okay, and we’re back.)
I wonder how those writers can take the vividness of what is happening to and around them and put them in such sound bites? Words that both distance themselves from the experience, and yet draw their listeners in to the sturm und drang of their world? I have a hard enough time as it is getting my fictional worlds to spin right; turning the spotlight on my own world is not so easy.
My life isn’t a sound bite. It can’t be encapsulated in a smart turn of phrase, or by an evocative strain of music. My life, like most people’s, is messy, full of abundant love, chaotic, wonder-filled, frustrating and dirty in absolutely every gorgeous sense of the word and yet – it defies simple definition.
In spite of my lack of a sound-bite, I’m opening a part of my private life to the world. I’m starting an intimate and irregular series of posts tomorrow, titled The Uterus Chronicles. If you come back to check it out, I’d appreciate it if you would pretend some soothing, cultured female voice were reading it in your ear.
Someone like Mara Liasson, perhaps.
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Until tomorrow – bring your opinions!
by Christine | Life, Observations
I didn’t have photos the last time I talked about the garden, but now I do. So here, first off, is the genius door in my garden. On the left is a pink jasmine, which blooms once a year, briefly. On the right is a star jasmine, which pretty much blooms in spring and all summer.
Tom's genius idea in place. Gorgeous!
Right behind the gate, on the other side, is the beginning of my basil dynasty. On the left, sweet basil. In the middle, Thai basil. And on the right (which you can’t see in this photo) varigated perennial basil. I’ll believe it when I see it – the perennial part, I mean.
Here’s my beets and bell peppers bed.
To the right is a pot of mint; in the bed behind this one is a blackberry (marion) climbing up the wire fencing, and strawberries planted in front of it.
The next photo is taken from an extreme corner of my back yard, trying to get as much of the scope of the garden as possible.
To the left is one of the Meyer lemon trees. Straight in front are four small artichoke plants and three bigger ones. Moving to the right is a Bearss Lime tree – and beyond that, more artichokes. (The gate gets lost in this photo.) The beet and bell pepper bed, shown above, is to the right of the trash can. Behind me is another lemon tree and some squash seedlings.
Onion bed, with bee balm (small) in each front corner. Mint is to the left, Johnny Jump Ups and Buddha to the right, more strawberries and a boysenberry behind, with white sage in the pot behind the pot with the Johnny Jump Ups.
Below: My (unweeded) rose garden, showcasing the new bedroom window…
and…the rose garden, tamed through Tom’s diligent weeding work. With some brilliant shadows on the wall, thanks to the annular eclipse today.
Hope you enjoyed the trip through the garden. Thanks for stopping by. I’ll post more as things develop!
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DEMON SOUL is out now…BLOOD DREAMS, a Caine Brothers Short Story available June 1st. DEMON HUNT coming this summer!
by Christine | Life, Observations, Writing
Or maybe I should call this post Sixes and Sevens? I’m be-bothered and out of sorts and ill-at-ease and put your catch-phrase here.
- Thanks to kansaswatercolor.com for the image.
(I’m somewhere there – right there, in the middle of the painting. Or maybe in the upper right side…or down left, toward the bottom…)
There’s no one reason for it, really, and a million tiny reasons for it. A bummer for me is that wine – red wine, as far as I can tell – now severely disrupts my sleep, to the point that I’m not waking at 5am to write because I’ve tossed and turned from 1am to 3am. Which means I need to cut back on my red wine intake, which in turn makes me get pouty-face – and trust me, I am not attractive in pouty-face. But…I don’t know about the wine part of the blog, which makes me even MORE pouty-face.
Then I’ve got something physical going on in my female parts – to where I feel ugly-pregnant. Annoying and irritating, especially when the doc says “well, you’re so close to menopause, you should just wait it out…” Grr. I like my doc, but grr. I go see a female gynocologist this Friday, so will know more then. But at least I had a CT scan a couple weeks ago, and all my other organs are peachy keen and in good health. (Now there was a “fun” way to lose an entire day. Sheesh.)
In case you've never had one - this is what the CT machine looks like.
Add in two boys who don’t yet have jobs, three partials I want to complete and polish up, another partial I need to finish so I can send it off to a couple agents, being stalled in my exercising, wanting to shed at LEAST 20 pounds, and having the typical crazy day at the day job I like and … well, it makes me feel betwixt and between.
Crankypants.
On the positive side? I sent out two partials as requested to an agent on Saturday, for books that are complete, and I found I really enjoyed working with those two books. Hadn’t read them in a couple years at this point.
A week ago, we got brand new windows on the house – and it’s cooler, quieter, and more secure – I LOVE my new windows! Plus it ups the value of the house, always a good thing.
Another positive thing, my oldest son now has his driver’s license, and my younger son is now learning. (21 & 18) Ever since they stopped teaching driver’s ed in the high schools here in California, the average teenage driver age has gone up. And up. A good thing, over all, but still – it’s nice that my kids are finally spreading their wings a bit.
BLOOD DREAMS, my short story set in the Caine Brothers world, releases on June 1st and I’ve got help with a book release promo on that day, so that’ll be fun. I’ve seen my cover for DEMON HUNT and can’t WAIT to show it to everyone – it’s fantastic! AND, I got a cover blurb for that book by NY Times Bestselling Author MAGGIE SHAYNE! So, yeah…lotsa good happening. Plus I’m working on Book 3 of the series.
Another, huge positive – Tom and I are closer than ever. That whole “you complete me” thing? It’s real. It’s more real now than it was 35 years ago, and it just keeps getting better. That, my friends, is scary-good.
Another positive is the garden. Tom’s worked so hard – and so have the boys. We have five original veggie planting beds, and Tom’s added nine more. We’ve decided using the back yard for growing stuff is more interesting than having grass (because our grass is mostly weeds).
We’re growing: cucumber, watermelon, potatoes, zucchini, crook-neck squash, beets, bell peppers, tons of onions, garlic, spinach, cilantro, 5 different kinds of basil, sunflowers, sage (both green and white), italian flat-leaf parsley and curly parsley, thyme, red lettuce from seed, dark green lettuce from seed (not yet seedlings), corn from seed, peas from seed; 3 different kinds of strawberries, black berries and boysenberries; on the bank, we’ve got 11 artichoke plants (6 of which are bearing artichokes this year; the other 5 are too young), two lime trees, two meyer lemon trees, two different orange trees, an apple tree, and pots of tomatoes? Glad you asked! We’ve got 8 pots of tomatoes, plus 4 heirloom tomatoes in the ground. Oh, and two pomegranate trees that aren’t big enough to have fruit on them yet (they’re barely 2 feet tall). Of the seeds not yet planted, bush snow peas, and celery, and I still have some sunflower seeds to plant…
Wow. Big grin. Mentally feeling much better – what a lovely garden (in it’s raggedy way)! I must post pictures. The really fun part of the new beds? Tom carted out this huge, terrific metal doorway that was a prop in a store I used to work for. I got to keep it…and now it’s solid in our garden, with jasmine growing up the sides and a hanging pot of petunias and alyssum in the center…when the jasmine grows up and over, it’ll be pure heaven!
Physically? I still feel blech. But at least, when I get home I’ll be able to sit in the garden with hubby, drink some bland and boring sparkling water, and enjoy all the growing things around me. Maybe I’ll even take pictures.
Thanks for stopping by. Hope you’re having a wonderful un-crankypants day!
by Christine | Life, Observations
thanks to soulofaword.com for the photo
I’ve about had it with Mom Jeans, or whatever other moniker has been put on those denim (or denim-knit) jean-like pants that every woman over 40 who’s had babies reluctantly tries on and inevitably buys because nothing else even remotely fits.
(Note: I tried to find a photo of Mom Jeans, and what I saw horrified me so much that I felt I couldn’t subject my readers to such photos. You’re on your own! Enjoy the flowers.)
I used to work in retail. I know jeans, especially Mom Jeans (though of course, we didn’t call them that in the store I worked for). You know the ones – they hold your tummy in while cutting you off at the waist. Or, the zipper is two inches long, the waistband is now hugging your bladder (which has dropped and is protruding due to those darling monsters you call children), and your belly fat slops over the top of the jean. They’ve changed the zipper only because they’re trying to lure in the 30-something women who normally don’t shop in the boutique stores but who do wear almost mons-baring jeans. (They’re still shopping in Forever 21. No, seriously.)
When you do get a pair of jeans that makes you look somewhat the way you did 30 years ago, they stretch. Slowly, insidiously, until wearing them the third day, you’re tugging them up over your ass every five minutes so you don’t look like a gang-banger with your undies showing. (Because you don’t think the people on the street need to know you still enjoy wearing thong underwear even though you’re over 50/not skinny anymore. Yes, thong underwear DOES come in large sizes, thankyouverymuch.)
Where was I? Oh yeah. So, in order to get these jeans to fit correctly, you have to get them a size smaller. Doesn’t matter what size you REALLY are – because the boutique stores’ sizes are all fucked up anyway. You climb into the size-smaller pair of jeans, suck in your stomach, blow out all the air of your lungs, stand on tiptoe, and TUG LIKE HELL to get the zipper up. Once you do, and after hastily dropping your somewhat-billowy shirt down to cover the fat rolls poking over the top, you do a fanny check.
Niiice. Not airbrushed, no spanx, but your fanny looks smooth. Firm. The jeans slim your legs down (or, if you’re on the thin side, make them look shapely), are long enough to wear a slight heel on those days you feel daring, yet won’t drag too horribly when you wear flats.
So you can’t breathe. Get over it, you’ll be able to breathe in two or three hours. And just think, in three days, your waistband won’t be hugging your asscheeks because they stretched too much, so you get more wearability with less washing (depending on how dirty your typical jeans-wearing activies are, of course).
You think, ah. Jeans Nirvana. After several hours in several different stores, you finally – FINALLY – find the right pair. After checking out the price tag (GULP – over a hundred bucks?!!), you reluctantly put the second pair back. Or, conversely, you buy a second pair, rationalizing that they never go on sale so may as well bite the bullet while you’ve still got room on your credit card and while you still fit into this ridiculous size that isn’t really your size but woo, it’s a small number.
Everything seems to be going well – until you’re wearing them for the first time in your real world day. Stressed, late for work, too much to carry – you go to shove your cell into one pocket and your small travel coffee cup into another pocket so you can get everything to the car in one trip. But the pockets? They’re not big enough for your HAND, much less your cell phone. While the beloved jeans of your youth had pockets that went deep, and could handle that coffee cup, these jeans don’t.
Oh Mr. Levi, or Mr. Wrangler, or heck, the Gap – can one of you PLEASE come up with a Mom Jean that makes me slim, beautiful, eliminates the rolls of fat, has nice deep pockets but doesn’t look strange from the front, and will also shove my bladder back where it belongs, permanently?
I’d so spend a hundred bucks for a pair of jeans like that.
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DEMON SOUL is out – have you read it yet? DEMON HUNT coming this summer!
(But come on. I mean, doesn’t that cherry tomato look DELISH?) I have a confession – I make sure I eat the first ripe cherry tomato, every season. That burst of flavor, mingled with the scent of tomato plant on my hands, is, every year, the herald of summer.
