Suzette Haden Elgin's Blog, page 4

Thursday and Friday...

George turned 75 on August 7th, and we went to Fayetteville yesterday to celebrate the occasion. We had a wonderful day -- flawless. George was able to find two books that he wanted as birthday presents, at Barnes & Noble. And then his lunch at the Red Lobster was perfect. Perfect lobster. Perfect baked potato. Perfect salad and salad dressing. Perfect cheddar biscuits. Perfect iced tea. I was so glad, because in 2009 there were glitches. First he couldn't find anything he wanted at Barnes & ...

Wednesday...

I can't risk posting exactly what I'll be making for my handmade Christmas gifts, because some of my family reads this blog, but I can say that the crafts in question will be collage and crocheting. You can read earlier posts about the gifts I make at http://ozarque.livejournal.com/319115.html and at http://ozarque.livejournal.com/319495.html .

Tuesday...

Yesterday I was lamenting my lateness in getting started on making my Christmas presents for this year. I'm fairly skilled at lamenting, and may have introduced a bit of confusion, all the while attracting sympathy I don't deserve. The thing is ... I absolutely love making those Christmas presents. The more time-consuming the process is, the more I revel in it. I love the bits and pieces of it. For me, making and giving presents is what makes Christmas joyful. Which means that I really do nee...

Monday...

I'm late -- seriously late. Ordinarily, by this time I'm well into working on my handmade Christmas presents, but this year I haven't even started. This is not a Good Thing, because they take me a long time.

Wurra, wurra...

Monday and Tuesday; postscript...

Many thanks for all the kind words and good wishes. However, I want you to be sure you know that my perception of the situation is that there's nothing whatsoever wrong with me except Old Age. And I don't feel the least bit sick.

My mother used to get terribly angry with her doctors because she was convinced that there was something they could have been doing on her behalf that they just, for some unknown reason, weren't doing. My own preference would be for my doctor to do quite a lot less ...

Monday and Tuesday...

It's been an interesting, but irritating, two days for me. Monday I had a chest cat scan; Tuesday I had an ultrasound of my throat. And it turns out that I don't have any of the following: lung cancer; pneumonia; carotid aneurysm; multiple myeloma. Which is of course good news.

I was all set to go on the cat scan when the metal detectors went off and we had to get me out of my back brace, which delayed things considerably. And then getting me back into it delayed things even more. That wasn't...

Thursday...

A number of you have pointed out to me that I could change my schedule and vary my routine, to get rid of some of the tedium. But I want you to know that although that's the obvious step to take, it's not as simple as that.

The problem is that for George -- and for Sheba -- there is a proper way to do things, and a proper order to do them in, and a proper amount of time to be spent doing them. And if I were to make changes in that schedule, they would be seriously distressed. Old people [and o...

Wednesday...

I am afflicted at the moment with a condition I can only call Malaise Of The Brain. My brain is as empty as my attic ought to be; I don't think there's even any dust up there. I can't think of anything interesting to say; I don't have the least bit of energy for writing a poem or an essay or a short story or a blogpost; my mind is as frail as the rest of me. It's a pitiful state, and I hope it's going to be brief. I'm just sort of watching the world go by, without feeling any impetus to contr...

Monday...

Today is a Momentous Occasion -- a Milestone. For the very first time, George has hired someone else to do some of the work that has to be done if we're going to be able to move. Someone forty years younger. Someone with a brand new tractor and a brand new brush hog. What persuaded him to do this I have no idea, but I'm grateful.

The weather hasn't been kind to me lately. We've had day after day, and night after night, of thunderstorms -- and when we didn't get a storm, they were still predic...

The Foreigner series grammar...

When I went looking for the grammar of American English hostile language, I was very lucky. For one thing, the Verbal Attack Patterns [like "If you REALLY loved me, you wouldn't waste MONEY the way you do!":] just leaped out at me, and they turned out to be a very large part of the hostility grammar.

With CJ Cherryh's Foreigner novels, I haven't had that sort of good fortune. However, I think I'm beginning to have a clue to at least one of the aspects of that grammar. What she does, leading up...