next on the bedside table

Before I Go To Sleep: A Novel

By S.J. Watson, hardcover, 368 pages, Harper, list price: $25.99, pub. date: June 14

This summer will see many thrillers come and go, but undoubtedly one of the most memorable will be this debut from S.J. Watson, an audiologist who wrote the book while on night shifts at a London hospital. Watson's main character, Christine, struggles with a big problem: Every time she goes to sleep, she forgets her name, her identity, her location, even her husband (due to a rare kind of amnesia). Each day is a new day, but in the most terrifying sense. Christine starts to keep a journal to remind herself of the basic details, and through it she learns that her husband, Ben, is keeping facts from her. Is he trying to protect her from a dark past, or is he concealing something more sinister? The structure of the novel — Watson shows us Christine's world through her diary — is heart-racing. We can never really tell what is real and what is invented, and as any keen reader of thrillers knows, the blurry line between truth and fiction can be scarier than blood and gore.

(I found the above online and I am already hooked. I do have a moral dilemma, however, because I plan to boycott Amazon because of their pissy stand on not collecting taxes for California, but this sounds like a Lindakindle-worthy book. What to do?)

meet my new friend(s)

OK, a little more cute here, we all can use that. Michael's cousin,
Anna, and I have become e-friends (yeah!) and she now has a blog
that I encourage you to read and enjoy. Anna is a writer, walker,
teacher, wife, mother, thinker and I so look forward to meeting her
one day very soon. In the meantime, I think you will love her blog
as I do. Enjoy!

Anna's Life

Post Script ~ Michael would LOVE that this is happening and he
sort of introduced us because he told each of us about the other
before he died. One more thanks, Seahorse.

busy with family stuff

My stepson Rob was in town for a two hurried days and we
went back to Patio Español because Husbando was longing
for paella and it's on special Wednesday nights. Funny, we
haven't been there in 20 plus years and then it's twice in
10 days. Anyway, good choice and still free and plentiful
parking and this time GREAT service.

Yesterday we ran errands for a dinner party and the other
step, John and his wife arrived, and we had a good old time
with various memories that didn't quite mesh. The "are you
sure it was blueberry pie, I remember apple," kind of thing.
Funny about how our brain storage units aren't as accurate
as we think they are and we can paint such precise images
and they can be so wrong.

I do want to insert here that running errands with Rob is
such a kick, especially in the Mission, because he isn't used
to SF city life and he loves the diversity and the fact that
the flower shop also sells canaries. We take it all for granted.
And he LOVED watching the huge grey blanket of fog roll in
last night from our back window.

Husbando broiled salmon and I almost overcooked
asparagus and made a huge salad that didn't last long
enough for when The Great Plotniks arrived from their
SoCal day. Sorry to kick them out (rudely) but we
needed to get Rob to the Hilton by the airport as he
caught the 6am flight back to Buffalo today. He works
too long and too hard and we worry about him, but it was
a delight to have him here and we already miss him.

And now I head for the Legion of Honor. Rush, rush.

the curtain descends

Our theater season 2011 was officially over Tuesday night when
we saw Tigers Be Still at the SF Playhouse. This was a good (not
great) play about a dysfunctional family and we know there is
no other kind, so we need specifics. One sister was dumped by
her boyfriend and has taken Jack Daniels to the sofa. The
other sister is starting her teaching career while care-giving
for their mother who has gained weight and refuses to leave
her bedroom. And then a young man and his father, grieving
the death of mother/wife and not in a wholesome way.

Written by a young woman (Kim Rosenstock) and directed
by our favorite Amy Glazer, it's 85 minutes and moves quickly
with a few laughs along the way. Well worth seeing, in my
most humble opinion.

a new kid in blog

Kingston meets Lula

Lula greets her new world

My dear friend Dancing Jen is heading back to Michigan
tomorrow to help her sister and family with the new baby
girl. She writes that even Kingston is enamored of his new
sister, but we know that won't last forever. (I don't believe
Lula is even a week old in this photo.)

OK, enough cute. I'll be back to fog and despair tomorrow,
I promise.

the innocents sleep

I love this photo of RR and two of her girl friends ~ thanks, Blogmaid.

For reasons I will never fully understand, I have won the Insomnia
Battle for the past week and sheeeeeesh, what a difference it makes.
I know that no one dies from lack of sleep, but everything is better
and almost makes sense when I do snooze. There were a few illegal
and loud fireworks last night, and I always worry about fire this
time of year, but still I managed to log in about 7 solid hours again.

Out to the Legion of Honor today, a new exhibit opens in 4 days
and I'll write about it as soon as I see it for myself. I prefer the
empty, before-customers galleries. Am I spoiled?

sunny, sparkly, quiet

Today I'm working (time and half $$$$ !) so it will be pretty much
of a non-holiday for us. I am wearing red/white/blue and we will
see the fireworks from our back deck tonight, and we will continue
to watch the nail-biting Breaking Bad (9th episode, Season 3)
which means that it's not easy falling asleep because the adrenaline
is pumping and the Sleepy Tea takes longer to quiet all the nerves.

The weather is phenomenal here and that's not always the case.
Happy 4th, everyone ~ be safe.

when did it start?

My Hypochondria: A Soliloquy

All day I felt a small disc of numbness just below
my scalp, a collapsed vein, I was sure, or a clot,

the first signs of a seizure coming on, of an aneurism,
or possibly a stroke, that anesthetized zero flaring

and disappearing for hours, like the red-blank-red
blinking of a stoplight, so that I lay awake that night

contemplating all the false scenarios of death: the helium
ascensions, the eternal returns, the crumbed body

called back into the grass, the unity, the whispering cup
on the Ouija board, but I found inside of me no heaven,

no Elysium, no Valhalla, no dreamtime, no Egyptian
Fields of Aaru, no meadow fat with buffalo, just the perfume

of myths, a bad disguise, like someone trying to cover
a bald spot, but the hole shows through, doesn't it, the numb-

spot at the center of the world, the straight-nothing that isn't
even black, which is what I felt leached to the top of my skull,

that yarmulke of emptiness, that blood-nothing at the core of us,
striking its one note for eternity, while our hearts, pink

and motherless, look to the sky with their eyes gummed shut,

like a nest of infant birds. When did I become
like this: paranoid, delusional? When did I start

looking at my own thoughts through a wall of glass?
When did I become this diminutive person, this toy man,

this Godless Pinocchio? Why can't I find the crack, gap,
that moment when the tape was spliced, that step in time

when the old self lifted a foot and the new one put it down?
Aren't there origins: the garden, the bang? Walk back against

the current, and won't you find the river's source?
Trace the etymology of every word and won't you find them

gathered in the same mouth, the same grunt, the same breath
across startled vocal chords? When did it begin, when was

that first drop of consciousness replaced? When did it start,
this abduction, this swap, this backwards dialysis of selves,

every molecule in my body muddied and returned? Why not hunt
the ghost of my former life? Why not hunt what haunts me? And if

the mind holds experience the way a Doppler holds weather—
as a symbol, as a code—then what choice is there except to chase

the storm back across the continents until the last ice-crystal
of cloud melts back into the oxygen, until the mind, bleached

and purified, reveals the noble blue that lies dormant within you,
or so that at least you can see that once you were okay,

that you were blameless, that you were luminous

Steve Gehrke

Bellevue Literary Review
Spring 2011

back to bad (and good)

The 4th Season of Breaking Bad starts mid-July, so we are busy
catching up with Season 3 using On Demand. It is soooooo intense
and the plot is full of intriguing surprises, so there are a lot of
"oh no, oh god, no" and I am forced to cover my eyes from time
to time. Above you find the two main characters ~ the student
Jessie on the left and Mr. White his teacher on the right. They
are making meth and it's not a business where one meets the
best elements of society.

In other news, we sat outside at Nettie's Crab Shack on Union
Street yesterday to gobble up mussels from Washington State
with Fatted Calf sausage crumbled in the mix. Oh, yum. It
is an area filled with young people who seem to have a lot of
time and money to sit, eat and drink wine and I say "enjoy,
enjoy," for we did the same in our feckless youth(s).

I work the next 4 days and am appreciating these glorious
and sunny days off even more than usual, or so it seems.

can we go outside and play?

Boogie boarding, Santa Barbara ~ 2005

(My dear writing group confidants liked this piece, so I thought
I'd share it this morning. Please realize that I have two (!) friends
named Ginger, and this is the SoCal one that I met in college.)

BAREFOOT (this was the Round Robin prompt)

Was there ever a better feeling? Playing in the sprinklers on a really
hot day when the grass was green and slippery and wet. I thought
about this the other morning out in Golden Gate Park on my way
to work. What would happen if I took off my shoes and whirled
around getting my clothes, hair and body soaked? Well, someone
would probably call the cops and of course I'd be late to work.

Childhood memories, the sensations remain. I guess my favorite was
was playing in the ocean, body surfing. Again the contrast between a
really hot day and the ice cold water. Sometimes it took forever to
get up the courage to take the final plunge and I would wade in oh
so slowly until I was wet up to my stomach, and then, the dunk.
Other times I'd just dash in and get the pain/pleasure over with quickly.

I was able to try this again as an older woman a couple of years ago
in Santa Barbara. I went boogie boarding with my college friend
Ginger and it was great, just as wonderful as it used to be. But you
know what was even better? Staying in our scratchy, sandy bathing
suits to run errands. So uncomfortable, and all the memories of
our summers at San Clemente came back and I realized again
how fortunate I was to grow up mostly outdoors as a California
kid. Summer is here, rejoice!

another SEVEN milestone

Gumbo!

Cheeseburger (and 4000 fries)

Last night The Great Plotniks treated us to dinner at Chenery
Park where we celebrated the fact that the Great Ducknik has
been retired for 7 years to the day. Back then they were heading
off to Peru, but currently they are here and in SoCal often,
because Doug's mom isn't doing all that well. It was a delightful
evening, but this blogger ate waaaaaaaaay too much, including
ice cream and giant cookies. Thanks, dear friends!

did you say SEVEN?

Blogworld doesn't want me to up or download an image this morning,
so I will just type away. Several months ago we discovered the joys
of On Demand on our ooooooooh-I-hate-them (sometimes)
Comcast TV and god knows what else. And do not click the wrong
button unless you want to spend an entire day trying to figure
out how to get the damn thing working again.

But I digress. Weeds is starting and we are able to watch it whenever
we want, no longer using the Flix® for this and other great shows.
It's Season Seven now ~ who can fathom that? As I have mentioned
before, it's just like real life. The two boys are almost adults now
and the show is a little darker, OK, a lot darker. But fabulous.
The acting, and the twists and turns are amazing. Great writing
trumps everything, doesn't it? This season we get to see NYC and
isn't that 416 times better than when/where we started in SoCal
suburbia? Nice to see you again Mary Louise Parker, aka Nancy
Botwain, and friends and family.

it's just MARRIAGE now (soon)

Rainbow colored Empire State Building

In a few years we will all wonder what the fuss was about. How
come same-sex couples were denied the freedom to marry in
our country? The New York victory last Friday night was exactly
what was needed to make this a non-issue, and not soon enough,
as far as we are concerned. At this point I do need to tip my hat
to Gavin Newsom who, though not a great mayor, was the first
to take the courageous stand years ago by legalizing same-sex
marriage here in the city. California will get on the band wagon
soon, and then the midwest states will follow. All the right wing
religious rhetoric makes me crazy as soon as I hear the phrase,
"the sanctity of marriage" I want to scream. I like the folks who
say, "OK, let's not allow divorce anymore if marriage is so
damn sacred."

do something new...

Yesterday I signed up to be the Team Captain (ahem) of the
October 20th fund-raising benefit Light the Night. Our group
will be called Missing Selhorst and because I have never
done anything like this, I don't quite know what to expect.
I do know that two of Michael's SoCal friends will be here
and maybe even his dear cousin Anna from the East Coast. I
donate when friends move out of their daily lives to raise
money for cancer, Aids, Parkinsons, etc. and I hope the
karma factor is at work here too. In the meantime, feel
free to register as a walker or give your hard earned money
to a very worthy cause.

talk, talk, talk and more talk

Hollyhocks in the community garden, Pleasanton

The downtown Pleasanton Famers' Market

I spent the entire delightful yesterday with my friend Ginger
over on her always-sunny (it seems) turf. My BART ride out
was empty, but the P-Town station was packed with folks
heading to SF for Gay Pride and also the Giants game. Quite
an assortment of fashion...

We started with a latte at Peet's, then a trip to her garden,
next a walk downtown, lunch outdoors (of course) and then
to her home because she's working on a big computer project
(ancestry.com) and I wanted to check that out. In between
we did some gentle therapy work on ourselves because there
is nothing quite as soothing as spending an entire day with
a best friend who has known me so well (and still loves me!)
for many decades. As a result, I slept beautifully last night for
the first time in what seems like a l-o-n-g time.

This morning I toast Friendship with my fresh glass of oj.

from another world

Here's a restaurant that no tourist will ever get to. It's waaaaaaaaay
out on Alemany and it has a big, free parking lot. We used to come
here after trips to Spain when we missed tapas, paella, gambas, etc.
On Thursday night our friends invited us to join them at Patio
Español to celebrate their wedding anniversary. What a treat!
The $17 full-course juicy lamb shank special meal included soup,
salad, fries and an ice cream dessert. This is a fine place for big
events, banquets and receptions. I know we'll return more often
now, even though we aren't planning any trips to Spain.

the fire without

My friend Mary has been emailing me about the huge fires in
Arizona and I wanted to update my readers too. They are
awaiting the rains, but the good news is that the human
spirit remains beyond amazing:

Good Morning!

The sun is up. The air is still. The fire is still burning in the Huachucas and will probably go the whole length of the mountain chain - but in some places it has leaped over canyons, leaving them intact except for the tops of trees. Since the wind died down three days ago the firefighters have managed to keep it from leaping across Highway 92 again. We are no long breathing smoke over in Bisbee. But we are aware of the burning. The fire in the Chirachauas on the east side of the county is likewise contained but burning across the whole mountain chain. Of course both these fires are going to have a long lasting effect on Cochise County. But people are in amazing spirits. When I was at the Safeway yesterday, one of the checkers had lost her home. And here she was at work. She said, "Oh, well. It's just things. We got our animals out safe. So, all we lost were things." This is one of several conversations I have had that show me a surprising side of the people that I live among these days.

book del jour

I sampled State of Wonder on my Lindakindle® and was
immediately hooked. Ann Patchett is one of my favorite
authors ever since Bel Canto. She has had a couple books
that missed the mark, but I believe this one is a bulls eye.

So I live in an electronic morning whirl of battery checking
and plugging in and out with my iPhone and this wonderful
reading device. When people say, "oh, I love books," I say,
"oh, I love words."

not exactly supportive

Dancing Jen sent me this list of 30 (!) author-on-author insults. Oooooh, they could be meanies. Click here if you want them all, I just gave you five. Meanwhile, the sunshine is gone this morning, but the mosquito bites linger on.

5. Evelyn Waugh on Marcel Proust (1948)

“I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.”

4. Mark Twain on Jane Austen (1898)

“I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

3. Virginia Woolf on James Joyce

“[Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.”

2. William Faulkner on Mark Twain (1922)

“A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.”

1. D.H. Lawrence on James Joyce (1928)

“My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.”

readers know best

Thanks to my friend with The Fevered Brain for recommending
this fun British TV series starring David Jason. We watched
the first episode last night after a glorious sunny day in the
city. Nice to have a few more episodes to look forward to!

Our day consisted of positive puttering and then a late lunch
with friends at Pacific Catch over at 9th and Lincoln. Tasty
food and not expensive, but the best part is that this restaurant
has a parking lot. Imagine, here in our very own city.

p.s. you know it's summer because I have mosquito bites. Argh.