I feel like Jack Nicholson's character on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Creativity stifled.

Water Theme

My cubby-hole of an office has one window, which looks out into the hall, the main hall. Probably 700 of the 800 people who work in this building pass by my office in the morning and at the end of the day since the main entrance is just past my office.
Today as I was walking back from the cafeteria with my lunch, an older gentleman asked, “Goin’ back into the fishbowl?” And that’s exactly what it’s like, like I work in a fishbowl, and anyone can look in on me. I do have blinds I can draw, but I feel so closed off when they’re down, so they’re up most of the time.
So I’m in a waterless fishbowl while at work—and speaking of water…

…there was none at the house this morning. Thank goodness I didn’t work out and get all sweaty like I do most mornings. I woke Mark up, and he checked to make sure the basement wasn’t flooded. After he learned everything was OK there, he called Cincinnati Water Works. This was around 6:30 a.m. The person he spoke with said the problem was with 701, our next door neighbors.
I just got off the phone with Mark and he said a crew didn’t show up until 10 a.m. to fix the problem, and they broke for lunch at 11 a.m. At the end of our phone conversation he looked out and said, “There’s nobody out there. It’s obvious they’re getting paid by the hour.”
I was planning to go to yoga tonight, which is why I didn’t work out this morning, but if I can’t get a shower at home, I don’t want to go to yoga. The only time I sweat more than when I do yoga is when I pull weeds on a 100 degree day. Ashtanga yoga really takes it out of me. I'm visiting a friend in Columbus Thursday night. Can I wait that long for a shower? Mark doubts it. I do too.

MTV's Made

My 18-year-old niece, Lindsey, has had the summer of her life. She is a natural thespian, writing, producing, and acting in plays since she was a little girl. However, she did none of that this summer; she spent a month learning to barrel race a horse.

Last year at her high school, MTV made a casting call for students for their emmy-winning show Made. From Wikipedia,

The series follows teens who wish to be ‘made’ into singers, athletes, dancers, skateboarders, etc. The teens are joined by a ‘Made Coach’, an expert in their chosen field, who try to help them attain their goals over the course of several weeks. Made documents the process the teens undergo as they try to achieve their goal.

Lindsey didn’t really have a goal to be “made” into anything (she’s pretty terrific as she is), she just wanted to be on the show. Being as creative as she is, she came up with something pretty original: She said she wanted to be a rodeo queen.

The producer liked the idea, and MTV found Lindsey’s alter-personality: a barrel racer who wants to be an actress. The two will share air time on a Super Made at the end of September.

Lindsey’s training culminated in her run on Saturday at a rodeo in Maryland. I won’t give away her finishing time. What I’ll do is post the show date and time when I find out for sure.

When I called yesterday, they were getting ready for the celebratory party, and MTV would be filming. My mom flew out from Ohio to see her granddaughter race. Mom used to barrel race when she was a teen, and MTV is playing up that angle. My brother told them also that his sister (me) is a coma survivor as a result of a horseback-riding accident. They might take off on that bent too, and My Lost Summer would get a plug on a nationally televised show!

I can’t wait to see Lindsey. Everyone I spoke to yesterday—Mom, my nephew, and my brother—all said she was beautiful.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

A couple weeks ago, a friend from work and I drove to Indianapolis to meet her parents for breakfast. They came over from Illinois, where my friend is from originally. After breakfast, we all visited the Indianapolis Zoo, where the only animals that appeared to be unaffected by the heat were the dolphins enveloped in their cool-water environs. When my friend and I got back to her place, we watched the musical Chicago, which I had gotten from Blockbuster.com, being a member.

That early evening as I gathered my things to go, even though I expressed no interest in the book, my friend handed me her copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the first in the Harry Potter series. She told me I’d like it.

I’m not really into fantasy or science fiction—things that can’t happen in real life—but I thought I’d give it a gander since my friend recommended it.

I started it a couple times in several days and got through the first two or three chapters and found it to be not quite as compelling as I expected with all the hoopla that occurs with each release of the story’s continuation.

However, once I read beyond the point where Harry is unassuming and pitiful—once he finds out that he is borne of a witch and a wizard—well, then the adventure begins.

I finished it this weekend, and my friend just stopped in my office and said she’d bring the second one. I can hardly wait.

Unsolicited Interest in Me as a Writer

Yesterday I got a message from someone here at work whom I didn’t know. I’d seen her name on e-mails that are distributed building-wide, so I knew the name, but I could not put a face to that name. She’s a PR person.

In the subject line of the message was “please call me -7###.” So I did. She asked me if I sit in the corner office in the new annex. I assured her that was me, and she asked if I had time to come to her office. She said she’s not supposed to be talking to a contractor (I am a contractor; she is a federal employee) so doesn’t want to come to my office, which has a window to the hall through which any passer-by could see us chatting.

I had no idea what this was about, but I told her, “Sure, I can come to your office.” She gave her room location, and I was off. I did make a quick stop in the bathroom to make sure my braces were food free as I was eating left-over pizza when I called her. The brackets weren’t too bad as I’d only taken a couple bites as yet. A quick swish of water around my mouth was good.

I walked in her office, and she asked me to close the door. She said that she read the articles posted to my office window, the one that looks out to the hallway, and thought, “This is someone who can write.” How flattering! The articles are the ones syndicated to four weeklies in southwest Ohio and posted to my other blog, www.OurNationsTreasure.blogspot.com.

I still didn’t know where this was going. If she wanted to purchase rights to the articles to publish in EPA literature? If she wanted to hire me on a freelance basis to write for the EPA. What?

What she wanted was to find out if I were interested in becoming a fed. Of course I was! The pay! The benefits! I’d be nuts not to want to move from contractor to fed. She told me that several writing positions are to be posted soon, and she didn’t know if they would be for “all eyes” or just for feds, but she told me she’d make sure I was aware of them.

How nice, huh? What a boost to my ego too. I hope they come up soon.

An E-mail I Sent to Friends and Family

Dear everybody,

Friday at 4:40 I took the call from the nurse who said my test showed I am not pregnant. It was our second insemination. I thought for sure I was pregnant this time because I felt different—really weak for about 18 hours about three or four days after ovulation, but since I’ve looked at the calendar to determine that, I know the weird feeling was not due to pregnancy because it takes an egg 10 days to attach.

Mark and I are heartbroken, but we’ve decided not to go to any more drastic measures to try to conceive. As Mark says, “We’re not giving up. We’re just not jumping through hoops anymore.”

This weekend I had my teary moments, but I’m doing OK. Mark is too.

Thank you for all your prayers.

God's hand in my recovery

I believe in the cliché, “Giving credit where credit is due,” and, sure, I believe God had a hand in my recovery, but I also believe “God helps those who help themselves.”

At a signing in May, a woman heard me read from My Lost Summer:

Thanks to therapy and training from my mom, today, more than twenty years after the accident, no one besides me can tell I ever had a serious brain injury.

She voiced her disapproval that I did not credit God in my recovery. Why or how did this lady even think I believed in God? I do, but ours is a free country, I can follow any belief I want.

I consciously limited the mention of God in My Lost Summer because that’s not what the book’s about; the book’s not about my family’s faith or non-faith in God—or any higher being. The book’s about my recovery, and I wrote it for the purpose of enlightening caregivers or readers in general about the experiences of the newly conscious coma survivor.

I credit mostly my mom with my full recovery. Since I’ve written this book, lots of people say, “Wow, you must have had some wonderful doctors,” and I suppose I did have, but they were “behind the scenes” players. My mom is who worked with me every day, who changed the bulletin board in my room in ICU, even though I was comatose, in order that I might be stimulated. Once I gained consciousness, she is who challenged me with simple puzzles and games, once I was released from the hospital, she is who defied doctors’ advice and sent me on to 8th grade.

The perfect cliché to end with is “God helps those who help themselves” –or those who help their daughters.